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GOD’S OPEN: 
SERMONS THAT TAKE US OUT-OF-DOORS 


By James I. Vance, D.D. 


God’s Open. Sermons that take us out-of- 
doors . } PSTSO 


Being a Preacher. A Ae of the Claims 
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In the Breaking of the ae A Volume 
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The Eternal in Man 
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GREAT WHITE OAK 


Standing on country estate, ‘‘ Tanglewood,”’ of Mr. Wm. N. Reynolds, near Winston- 
Salem, N. C. It is 98 feet high, 28 feet circumference at base, 102 feet spread 
of branches. 


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GOD’S OPEN: 


Sermons That Take Us Out-Of-Doors 






By 
JAMES I.*VANCE, D.D., LL.D. 


Pastor First Presbyterian Church, 
Nashville, Tenn. 





New Yorrk CHICAGO 


Fleming H. Revell Company 


LonpON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, 1924, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


To my sons, in memory of the 
many happy days we have spent 
together in the open along the 
trout streams and on the mountain 
heights in the Land of the Sky. 


GOD’S WORLD 


O, world, I cannot hold thee close enough! 
Thy winds, thy wide gray skies! 
Thy mists, that roll and rise! 
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag 
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag 
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! 
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough! 


Long have I known a glory in it all, 

But never knew iu this ; 

Here such a passion is 
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear 
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year; 
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall 
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call. 


—Epna St, VincENT MILLAY. 


. A MAN AND THE WILDERNESS 
. Fapinc LEAVES . 
. ANOTHER VILLAGE 


. THE ForcoTTEN WATER-POT . 
. THE WHITE FIELDS . 

. MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY . 
. A SENSE OF Far Horizons 


Contents 


. Curist’s LiFE IN THE OPEN . 

. Like A TREE 

. A MAN AND A Brook 

. Tue First BREAKFAST 

. THE Sprinc By THE SIDE OF THE 


ROAD . 


. Gomnc FIsHING . BN NG 
. Tue CrRooKED TREE THAT STRAIGHT- 


NED. 


PAWN-BROKERS 


. Tur PLacE WHERE THEY Latp Hm . 


. 101 
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DR pals 


. THE PauMs, THE TEARS, AND THE 
. 139 


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23 
39 
oo 


67 
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89 


149 


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Ad ads, 
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For the use of the following copyrighted material 
included in this volume, permission has been secured 
either from the author or from his authorized 
publisher: 

“God’s World,” from “ Renascence,” by Edna St. 
Vincent Millay, published by Mitchell Kennerley. 

“Trees,” from “‘ Joyce Kilmer’s Poems,” by Joyce, 
Kilmer, published by George H. Doran Co. 

“Toil of the Trail,” from “’The Long Trail,” by 
Hamlin Garland, published by Harper Bros. 

“ Church in the Wildwood,” from “ Rodeheaver’s 
Collection of Male Voices,” by Dr. Wm. A. Pitts, 
published by Rodeheaver Co. 

“In the Cool of the Evening,” from “ Collected 
Poems,” Vol. L., by Alfred Noyes, published by Fred- 
erick A. Stokes Company. 


I 
CHRIST’S LIFE IN THE OPEN 


A BALLAD OF TREES AND THE MASTER 


Into the woods my Master went, 

Clean forspent, forspent, 

Into the woods my Master came, 
Forspent with love and shame. 

But the olives they were not blind to Him, 
The little gray leaves were kind to Him: 
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him 

When into the woods He came. 


Out of the woods my Master went, 

And He was well content. 

Out of the woods my Master came, 

Content with death and shame. 

When Death and Shame would woo Him last, 
From under the trees they drew Him last: 

*T was on a tree they slew Him—last 

When out of the woods He came. 


—SIDNEY LANIER. 


I 
CHRIST’S LIFE IN THE OPEN 


“He went into a mountain apart to pray: and when 
the evening was come, he was there alone.’”—MatTtHEw 
Oia 23. 


HE, shadows of evening are falling. There 
is that stillness in the wood which comes at 
the close of the day, when creature life 

seeks repose. The trees and the rocks, the bloom- 
ing flowers and climbing vines, are waiting for 
Him. Then the hush of nature is broken by a foot 
fall, and into the woods the Master comes. Up the 
mountain side He climbs to His oratory. 

He is alone. He has left the world behind Him. 
He has turned from the great crowds that thronged 
Him. He has sent His disciples by boat across the 
little sea, and now He seeks and finds, not solitude, 
but fellowship, in God’s open, for He has come to 
the woods to pray. Not to some synagogue or 
temple, not to a shrine that man has built, not to an 
altar some priest has consecrated, but under a tree 
that God has grown and on a stone that nature has 
fashioned, the Son of man kneels for His com- 
-munion with God. 

He has come from achievement. ‘There on the 
lake shore where the crowds gathered, He. has 


11 


12 GOD'S OPEN 


been giving Himself without stint. High on the 
mountain side above the noise and tumult of the 
seething, needy world, He seeks rest and quiet. 
Soon He is to return to achievement. Already the 
boat that bears His disciples across the little lake 
is in the midst of a stormy sea, tossed by contrary 
winds, and in the gray dawn of the fourth watch 
of the night, He must hasten to them. But the 
feet that climb the mountain will as easily walk the 
sea. Then when the boat comes to land yonder at 
Genessaret, the people “ from that country round 
about ” will be waiting for Him with all that were 
diseased, and He will stand among them, and they 
will touch the hem of His garment, and as many as 
touch His robe shall be made perfectly whole. 
And so the Saviour has come into the wood for 
more than rest. He has sought the mountain for 
renewal, for endowment, for power. He must be 
furnished afresh for His great ministry to the 
needy world. He must have a new contact with 
the Source of strength, a period of undisturbed 
and unbroken communion with His Father. He 
seeks and finds it in God’s great out-of-doors. 
One wonders what Christ prayed for that night 
in the mountain oratory, when He was alone with 
God. What was the burden of His supplication as 
He poured out His soul to His Father? On other 
occasions the words of His prayers are preserved; 
here, it is merely the recital of the fact that He 
went into a mountain apart to pray, and that when 


CHRIST’S LIFE IN THE OPEN 13 


the evening was come, He was there alone. His 
loneliness was not solitude. Never was there such 
companionship. The quiet of the woods was about 
Him. The stillness of God’s great cathedral lay on 
His soul. God was in His holy temple. The Eter- 
nal was “ closer than breathing, nearer than hands 
and feet.” 

And so we think of that night of prayer in the 

chapel of the hills as a night of communion, of fel- 
lowship between God the Father and God the Son. 
Is not this the essence of prayer and the soul of 
religion itself? Prayer is something other than a 
scheme to acquire, to induce God to change His 
mind or His method, to persuade Him to bestow 
what He is disposed to withhold. Prayer is not 
wrestling with God, as Jacob found that weird 
night by Jabbok. Prayer, instead of overcoming 
God’s reluctance, lays hold of His willingness. 
Prayer is giving one’s self up to God without con- 
ditions, as the Master did that night in the garden: 
“ Not my will, but thine, be done.” There is no 
greater prayer. 
As He goes down the mountain in the dim light 
of early dawn from that night among the friendly 
trees, from the flowers and the rocks and the warm 
earth so kind to Him, He is ready. 


THE LIFE OF JESUS OUT OF DOORS 


Enlarging this incident, we shall have a picture 
of much of the earthly ministry of Jesus. A large 


14 GOD’S OPEN 


part of His time was spent in the open. Palestine 
is a country with a climate so kind that for eleven 
months in the year one may sleep on the ground 
and live with nature as a close and kindly friend. 
Doubtless Christ’s body was often wet with the 
dew, and the moon and stars shone down on His 
face as He fell asleep. He must have loved the 
trees and fields, the hills and valleys and lakes, the 
streams and roads, the flowers and the sunshine, 
the winds and the blue skies and the shining stars. 
He was priest of the house not made with hands. 

The great events of His life and ministry were 
nearly all out-of-door experiences. His birth was 
so close to nature that the nearest companions of 
His first night on earth were the beasts of the stall. 
When the hour came for His baptism, it was not 
from some sculptured urn or chiseled font that the 
water was taken, nor under some templed dome 
that heaven’s dove descended. It was by the river- 
side from the waters of a living stream under the 
open skies. There out of doors a man from the 
wilderness baptised the Son of God, and a voice 
from the firmament said: “‘ This is my beloved son 
in whom I am well pleased.” 

To the two disciples who met Jesus shortly after 
His baptism, and who asked: “ Master, where 
dwellest thou?” Jesus replied: “Come and see.” 
And they went and spent the day with him. 
Where? Christ never owned a house. We won- 
der if it was not to some quiet spot in vale or 


CHRIST’S LIFE IN THE OPEN 15 


wood, to the bank of pool or stream, under the 
cool shade of a great rock, that Andrew and his 
friend were taken that day by Him Who was to 
become their Master, and Who was to lead them on 
to world conquest and martyrdom. 

Of Christ’s sixty-four parables, thirty-two take 
us out of doors. He utters the profoundest truths 
of religion and interprets them with the common- 
est facts of nature. He saw that “earth was 
crammed with heaven, and every common bush 
aflame with God.” So far from any contradiction 
between God’s word and His works, to Jesus 
nature was luminous and musical with the divine. 
The fig tree, the wind, the clouds, the rain, the 
mustard seed, the vine and its branches, the tares, 
the treasures hid in a field, the fishing nets, the lost 
sheep, the wheat fields and husbandmen, are all 
packed with messages from God. When Jesus 
would preach, His pulpit was a mountain top or a 
lake shore, a dell or a street, and His text a blade 
of grass from some green field, a flower blooming 
by the roadside, a gushing spring, a singing brook, 
a cloud or a star. 

Of the forty-eight miracles recorded of Jesus, 
thirty-seven call us to the open. There He not 
only stilled the tempest and walked the sea and fed 
the crowds, but healed the sick and cleansed the 
lepers and opened the eyes of the blind and cast out 
devils and raised the dead. 

It was in the wilderness that Jesus won His first 


16 GOD’S OPEN 


victory over Satan. It was as He walked by the 
sea that He found and called Peter and Andrew, 
James and John. And it was out in the mountains 
that the ordination of the twelve took place. He 
was an open air preacher, and His greatest sermons 
were delivered out of doors, one on a mountain-top, 
another beside a well. It was not in some stately 
temple nor sombre cathedral that the transfigura- 
tion as well as the temptation occurred, but on the 
top of a high mountain, with common earth under 
foot and the sinless heavens overhead. ‘There in 
the clear, bold light of open day Moses and Elias 
appeared, talking with Jesus. The “dim religious 
light ” does not come to us from the ministry of 
Him Who lived and taught out of doors. 

Thus they followed Jesus when He was on earth. 
The people found Him in God’s great out-of-doors. 
He is to be found there still under the open skies, 
beneath the shade of trees, along the beaten high- 
ways or dim trails or beside stream and lake not 
less than in the churches man has built. 


JESUS’ RELIGION AND THE OPEN 

All this bears in a striking way on the religion 
Jesus brought to men. It confirms its genuineness. 
Jesus did not clothe Himself with mystery nor hide 
in the shadows. He did not house Himself in a 
hermit’s cell or sacred crypt or holy retreat. He 
did not shun publicity. He dwelt in the full glare 
of day, where all He said and did can be tested and 


CHRIST’S LIFE IN THE OPEN 17 


investigated and scrutinized. His ministry was in 
the open where concealment was impossible. He 
was a priest of the street, a preacher of the high- 
way, and any who would could come to His side 
and touch Him and look into His kind face and 
hear His gentle voice and be blessed. In this 
Christ stands singular and alone among the found- 
ers of great religion. 

It reveais its simplicity. Nature takes us away 
from the ornate and the artificial to the simple and 
the sincere. It hates shams and veneer. It needs 
no make-up. Jesus was simplicity incarnate, and 
His gospel the religion of sincerity. Nature never 
poses nor affects, is never artificial. The same is 
true of Jesus as a teacher. He was never grandilo- 
quent, never studied nor dramatic, never a mere 
actor. Anyone could understand Him. The truths 
He revealed were eternal, but they were uttered in 
the language of the common people, and expressed 
in metaphors of daily life. 

It also bears on its interpretation. Jesus brought 
religion and nature together. He is a poor disciple 
of Jesus who shuns science and is afraid to know 
God’s world too well. Nature will never defame 
God. It will never betray its Master. In his study 
of nature, man may often fall short of the facts 
and reach unwarranted conclusions, but if he will 
be reverent and patient, the lost path will be re- 
discovered, and it will be found to lead to God. 
It aids, too, in the experience of the religion of 


18 GOD’S OPEN 


Jesus. Much that God would give us is to be best 
had in the open. There is a delightful contact out 
of doors with Him Who made and rules the world. 
‘There is rest for tired nerves, renewal of courage, 
recovery of poise, correction of values, and emanci- 
pation from the vain show. He is to be pitied who 
never has a chance to return to the wild and get 
acquainted with the world as it was when it came 
from its Maker’s hands. The man who said of 
vacation: “ Whatever choice you make, you are 
pretty sure to regret it,’ was evidently a tender- 
foot, and confined his recreation periods to hotels 
and Chautauquas and tailor-made parks. 

I am sorry for city children who never get off 
pavetnents, who never see a flower unless it is cut 
or growing in a pot, who never wade a stream nor 
climb a tree nor go swimming and nutting in 
the open. 

When you are worn out, take to the woods. 
When your great temptation is on, hurry to the 
wilderness. Get away from people. Get close to 
nature. Get a rod and hunt for a trout stream. 
Get a stick and some walking shoes and be off on a 
hike. Get a horse and ride out of storm into peace, 
out of worry into heaven. Get a boat and push out 
on lake or river, and as the ripples fall from your 
paddle or the winds play with the sails, forget 
your troubles. 

Are your nerves on edge? Get your tackle and 
come with me to a laughing stream. ‘The banks 


CHRIST’S LIFE IN THE OPEN 19 


are dense with rhododendron, and above the brook 
the trees put their heads so close together that only 
here and there is the glint of the sun on the shining 
water. We wade the stream, and let the fly drift 
with the current. Now on a gleaming ripple, now 
in a dark pool, now in the lee of a fallen log the 
trout leaps, the line stiffens, and the electric current 
charges up arm and spine. The creel fills. Ona 
rock that lifts from the brook or on a patch of 
mossy bank we eat our lunch, and at the same time 
feed on the beauty of the world. Then another 
mile with the brook. Then home. Then a night 
of dreamless sleep, and when morning wakes, 


“ God’s in His heaven, 
Alls right with the world.” 


Have you soured on life? Come, let us visit our 
big brothers, the trees in the forest. Let us stroll 
among the ferns and galax and wintergreen. They 
are all waving a welcome. A rabbit jumps from 
cover and scampers across our path. A gray 
squirrel barks from a dizzy limb, and the birds 
sing. Your ugly mood is lifting. The evil spell is 
broken, and soon you are in tune with the beauty 
of the world. 

Have you lost courage and faith? Mount a 
horse and let us ride. I will take you up a bridle 
path under the shade of trees, across limpid fords 
whose crystal waters splash your stirrups, by the 
side of murmuring waters riding toward the sky- 


20 GOD’S OPEN 


line, from whose heights you may see the blue 
ranges of the mountain world for a hundred miles, 
and the deep green of far valleys, and the curling 
smoke of cabins long removed, and hear now and 
again the sound of an axe or the deep baying of a 
hound or the shout of a mountaineer or the call of 
cattle and sheep. As you ride homeward and dis- 
mount from your horse, if you do not lay your 
hand on his neck and for a moment fondle him, if 
you do not feel that the burden has slipped from 
your shoulders and the load from your heart, if you 
have not come to believe that the world is kinder 
than you thought and people better and God surer 
and nearer, you had best write your will. 


“Into the woods the Master came.” 


“ He went up into a mountain apart to pray, and 
when the evening was come, he was there alone.” 
We do well to follow the Master into God’s open. 
We have made religion too much of an indoors 
affair. We have taught people that if they would 
find God they must look for Him in a church. He 
is to be found in the church, but also in the moun- 
tains and fields and by the sea. 

The narrow streets of the cities of the old world 
hark back to an age of fear. As the world grows 
safer and kindlier, walls fall and streets widen. It 
is a good sign when man’s home is less of a house 
and more of a garden, and his worship less a ritual 
and more a life. 


il 


LIKE A TREE 


THE BRAVE OLD OAK 


’ 'A song to the oak, the brave old oak, 

Who hath ruled in the greenwood long; 

Here’s health and renown to his broad green crown, 
And his fifty arms so strong. 

There’s fear in his frown when the sun goes down. 
And the fire in the west fades out; 

And he showeth his might on a wild midnight, 

When the storms through his branches shout. 


Then here’s to the oak, the brave old oak, 
Who stands in his pride alone; 

And still flourish he, a hale green tree, 
When a hundred years are gone! 


In the days of old, when the spring with cold 

Had brightened his branches gray, 

Through the grass at his feet crept maidens sweet, 
To gather the dew of May. 

And on that day to the rebeck gay 

They frolicked with lovesome swains; 

They are gone, they are dead, in the churchyard laid, 
But the tree it still remains. 


He saw the rare times when the Christmas chimes 
Were a merry sound to hear, 

When the squire’s wide hall and the cottage small 
Were filled with good English cheer. 

Now gold hath sway we all obey, 

And a ruthless king is he; 

But he never shall send our ancient friend 

To be tossed on the stormy sea. 


—HrnryY FotTuHercitt, CHORLEY. 


I] 
MIRE As DRE B, 


“ He shall be like a iree.”—-PSALMs 1: 3. 
Ah HE, Duke, in “ As You Like It,” says: 


“__our life, exempt from public haunt, 
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.” 


King David, in the first Psalm, sings the song 
of a tree that tells the life story of a man: “ And 
he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of 
water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; 
his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he 
doeth shall prosper.” 


A PROMISE 


What a wonderful thing a tree is! Some day a 
tiny seed falls into the lap of Mother Earth, and 
resting its tired cheek on her warm bosom, goes to 
sleep. When it wakens, the miracle of being has 
been wrought, the door of destiny swings wide, 
and the world of light and song and sunshine calls. 

Think how a tree grows! With infallible 
instinct it feels out and finds what it needs. It 


23 


Re GOD’S OPEN 


gathers food from the soil. It extracts sustenance 
from the,rocks. It drinks from stream and sky. 
It imprisons the sunshine until its garments are 
living green. It bows. to the winds and bends to 
the storms and blushes under the warm gaze of the 
ardent sun. ‘Through all this, it grows tall and 
strong and. lusty, spreading its branches to bless 
the earth, and lifting its head to salute the heavens. 

Thirkk of how a tree serves! The birds come 
and build their nests in its boughs. Any bird that 
will-may come, for the gospel of the tree is: 
“ Whosoever will may come.” The beasts of the 
field, the cattle and the sheep, and tired men from 
the noisy town come to rest in its shade, and when 
its fruit grows to luscious ripeness, it says: “‘ Take 


and eat.” If you will not take, it will of its own 


accord drop its bounty in your hand, for the tree 


‘lives to serve. 


Think of how a tree suffers! It bares its head 
to the tempest, its face is exposed to the ice and 
snow, it meets in the open the attacks of the storm 
wind, it is bruised and broken by the tempest, and 
when the woodsman drives the keen edge of his 
axe into its heart, the tree gives its life to feed 
man’s fire and warm his home. 

Think of how responsive a tree is! Nothing 
leaves it as it found it. It responds to the seasons. 
It stores up in itself the record of all it does and 
says and thinks and becomes. It draws a circle 
around its heart for each passing year. It carries 


LIKE A TREE 25 


to its grave the kiss of every sunbeam, the baptism 
of every raindrop, the caress of every zephyr, the 
stroke of every thunderbolt, and the scars made by 
the sword of the ice-king. 

Think of how the trees bind the world together! 
Successive generations have the same tree for a 
friend. Yonder is a tree whose wide-spreading 
branches gave generous shade to father and mother. 
The children and the children’s children will come 
and sit there and talk to one another of how life 
fares. ‘The tree will listen, and laugh or weep or 
sing, according to the story. Sweethearts, for five 
hundred years, have been saying the same things 
to each other under that old tree, and the tree has 
never grown weary oi listening, nor has it ever 
betrayed a secret. If it could only speak our lan- 
guage, what scenes it would recite, what tragedies 
relate, what romances unfold! It could talk to us 
of the years that stretch back into the dim past. 
When a youth at college, I planted a tree on the 
campus. Now and then I make a pilgrimage to 
that tree and lean against its growing trunk and 
look up into its spreading branches and listen, as 
the tree talks to me of things I might forget, but 
should remember. 

Yes, a tree is a wonderful thing. It takes God 
to grow trees. It takes Him a thousand years to 
grow some trees. And yet a tree that required a 
thousand years for God to grow, a man in one brief 
hour may kill, It is wanton desecration needlessly 


26 GOD’S OPEN 


to kill a tree. One cannot withhold a protest when 
he sees the forests destroyed. It 1s an infamy that 
is common in America, and it will bring down on 
our guilty heads the wrath of generations yet un- 
born who, when they go out to look for their 
trees, will find only the graveyards of the greatest 
forests the world has known. ‘Thank God for 
trees! I should hate to live whére there are none. 


“T think that I shall never see 
A poem lovely as a tree, 


“A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed 
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast, 


“A tree that looks at God all day, 
And lifts her leafy arms to pray, 


“A tree that may in summer wear 
A nest of robins in her hair; 


“Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 
Who intimately lives with rain. 


“Poems are made by fools like me, 
But only God can make a tree! ” * 


The Psalm, however, is something more than 
the recital of the glory of a tree. It is a tree recit- 
ing the glory of aman. It is more than a plea for 
forest preservation. It is a plea for the preserva- 
tion of that which God made when He toiled at the 
summit of creation and made man in His image, 


* Joyce Kilmer. 


LIKE A TREE 27 


and crowned him with the lordship of the world. 
Wonderful as is a tree, there is something more 
wonderful. It is a soul. It is personality. That 
we may know how wonderful a soul is, God seems 
to say: “ Sit down under the trees and let them 
talk to you. Listen, as down from their leafy 
boughs comes this line from an old song: ‘ He 
shall be like a tree!’ ” 

It is a glorious thing just to be like a tree, to 
come into being as a tree comes, to have God think 
your soul awake until for you the miracle of being 
has been wrought, and the door of destiny swings 
wide, and the world of light and song and sunshine 
calls you to God’s great out-of-doors. 

It is glorious to grow as a tree grows, to reach 
out into the world around you and lay hold of 
things which by the invisible processes of life build 
themselves into the fabric of the soul, to find in the 
earth beneath you, in the sky above you, and in the 
world about you the things which enable you to 
become, until all of God’s great universe is found 
to be just a garden in which the soul gets its 
growth. 

It is glorious to serve as a tree serves, to give 
yourself freely to all whose need stops at your 
door, to find that people seek you for the help you 
can give, to have the weary rest in your presence 
and see the troubled blessed with peace, to watch 
those who had lost happiness recover it, until they 
sing and shout in your company, to feed and succor 


28 GOD’S OPEN 


and sustain until the worn of the world look into 
your face with the light of heaven in their eyes. 

It is glorious to suffer as a tree suffers,—to 
suffer, but not in vain, to take discipline without a 
murmur, to discover that pain is only a method of 
development, to be as happy in winter as in sum- 
mer, to be as confident when the snow is on the 
ground and the leaves are sere and dead as when 
the grass is green and the flowers are in bloom. 

It is glorious to have the world experience of a 
tree, to have the life of the race become a part of 
your daily experience, to hear the laughter of chil- 
dren and laugh with them, to behold the infirmities 
of age and slow down that you may keep step, to 
see the tears of grief and to weep with those who 
weep, to hear the sighs of the lonely and to make 
them your own, to be like a tree in your sympa- 
thies, taking the whole world up into your heart. 
This is the promise. This is the way God wants 
us to live. He would like man’s life to be as beau- 
tiful, as symmetrical, as useful, as responsive, as 
that of a tree. 

Here is a man’s salute to the trees: 


“Many a tree is found in the wood, 

And every tree for its use is good: 

some for the strength of the gnarled root, 
Some for the sweetness of flower or fruit, 

Some for shelter against the storm, 

And some to keep the hearthstone warm; 

some for the roof and some for the beam, 
And some for a boat to breast the stream. 


LIKE A TREE 


bo 
er) 


In the wealth of the wood since the world began, 
The trees have offered their gifts to man. 


“But the glory of trees is more than their gifts: 
*Tis a beautiful wonder of life that lifts 
From a wrinkled seed in an earthbound clod 
A column, an arch in the temple of God, 
A pillar of power, a dome of delight, 
A shrine of song and a joy of sight! 
Their roots are the nurses of rivers in birth, 
Their leaves are alive with the breath of the earth; 
They shelter the dwellings of man, and they bend 
O’er his grave with the look of a loving friend. 


“JT have camped in the whispering forest of pines 
I have slept in the shadow of olives and vines; 
In the knees of an oak, at the foot of a palm, 

I have found good rest and slumber’s balm. 
And now, when the morning gilds the boughs 
Of the vaulted elm at the door of my house, 

I open the window and make a salute: 

‘God bles thy branches and feed thy root! 
Thou hast lived before, live after me, 

Thou ancient, friendly, faithful tree!’ ” 


For a human life to get from the tired and toil- 
ing of earth as fine a tribute as Henry van Dyke 
here pays to trees is not to have lived in vain. 


A PROMISE WITH A CONDITION 


The promise that man shall be like a tree is pre- 
ceded by a condition. In the opening verses of the 
Psalm, a portrait is painted. It is not the portrait 
of a tree, but of a man. 

“‘ Blessed is the man that walketh not in the 


30 GOD’S OPEN 


counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of 
sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful; but 
his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law 
doth he meditate day and night.” 

It is the portrait of a man living in harmony 
with his Maker. ‘This harmony obtains in every 
part and posture of his being. It has to do with 
the way he walks and stands and sits, with his 
pleasures, with the moments when he is shut in 
silent contemplation within the quiet seclusion of 
his own soul. He is living a life of companionship 
with his Maker. When he walks, he walks with 
God. Whether he stands or sits or plays, he feels 
the Divine Presence about him. When he medi- 
tates, his solitude is glorious because God is there. 

There is no promise to the man who is godless. 
There is nothing here for him to clam who re- 
pudiates and casts out of his life the God of the 
trees. Why should one think himself able to 
achieve a life of harmony and beauty by ignoring 
his Maker and despising every provision and vio- 
lating every law God has made for his growth and 
development? No tree was ever so foolish. ‘The 
trees worship and obey. There is no rebellion in 
nature. It is in the human heart alone that the 
Divine will is challenged. Man only of all God’s 
creatures would live his life with God left out. 

It cannot be done. The scientist who says it can, 
lies. Any sect that says it can be done is more 
clever than honest. Any student who Ai; out 


\ 


\ 


) 


LIKE A TREE 31 


of his laboratory to announce that he has discov- 
ered that man can live without God has a brain 
addled by the fumes of his experiments. Man was 
made for God. It is as natural for the soul to turn 
to its Maker as it is for the roots of a tree to seek 
the soil, or the leaves to reach up for rain and sun- 
shine. It takes God to make a soul. How long? 
If it takes God a hundred or a thousand years to 
make a tree, how long does it take Him to make a 
soul? As trees that required a thousand years for 
their growth may be slain in an hour, so swiftly 
may a soul for which the Son of God gave His life. 

One day, when a lad, I made a wonderful dis- 
covery about trees. It was that they grow great 
and live long in proportion to what is underground. 
I was spending the summer at my grandfather’s 
farm. On the hillside above the big spring stood 
a great white oak, a forest king, measuring some 
five or six feet in diameter at the base of its trunk. 
During the long years erosion has been at work 
on the soil around its roots, and on this summer 
day to which I refer, there was a cloud-burst and 
a landslide that left the great roots exposed to a 
depth of several feet. To my amazement I discov- 
ered that the tree was as big underground as above. 
This was the secret of its vigour and longevity. 
The same is true of souls. Souls grow greatest 
that strike deepest into God. It is not what you 
see, it is what you do not see, that gives the meas- 
ures of aman. The soul that has the biggest life 


32 GOD’S OPEN 


is the soul that has the largest contacts with God. 
Hence the condition precedes the promise. When 
the condition is complied with, the promise may be 
claimed. 


HE PROMISE A PROPHECY 


A man who walks with God shall be like a tree. 
What kind of a tree? There are trees that do not 
amount to much. There are trees no one would 
want to be like, trees that are twisted, stunted, de- 
formed, sickly, dying. I have gone through for- 
ests in the Northwest, and seen huge trees eight 
feet in diameter cut down and lying rotting in the 
swamps. Who would want to be like these? Yet 
there are men of great gifts, occupying big posi- 
tions, but who are guilty of similar folly. Made 
to rule the world, they rot in vice and sin. God’s 
life is not in them. They are like a tree, but the 
tree they are like is dead. Its glory is gone. 

“He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of 
water.” This is the prophecy. It is a tree in living 
contact with the Source of life. It is interesting to 
see what water can do for a tree. One summer a 
neighbour gave us a tree. She was making some 
improvements on her house nearby which necessi- 
tated the removal of this tree. The tree man came 
with his teams and workmen and transplanted the 
tree. It was a splendid hackberry. He guaran- 
teed that it would live, but a few days after its 
removal, the leaves began to fade and fall, and soon 


LIKE A TREE 35 


the tree stood leafless. All summer long a basin 
around the root of the tree was kept filled with 
water, and eagerly we watched the next spring to 
see what would happen. To our delight, the leaves 
budded once more, and soon the tree was waving 
green. It has grown as no tree along that street 
has grown. ‘The water saved its life. It is so 
with a soul in living contact with God. It is “ like 
a tree planted by the rivers of water.” The burn- 
ing heat of summer cannot quench its life. 

“Tt bringeth forth its fruit in its season; its leaf 
also shall not wither.” So with the man who ts 
like such a tree. His life is not barren nor de- 
formed. ‘“‘ Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” 
There is no defeat. He shall serve and live and 
triumph. It is a promise of prosperity, of happi- 
ness, and of usefulness. This is what God pledges 
life shall be when the soul is united to the Source 
of life. 

Such a tree has faith, and the faith of a tree 
never wavers. It takes God at His word. It trusts 
that the rain will come when it is needed, and that 
sunshine and soil will give what is required. Such 
a trust is easy to the soul that is planted in God. 
The reason doubt attacks us is that we are trying 
to trust a God in Whom we do not live. 

Such a tree can teach men how to pray. It says 
that prayer is not arguing with God, nor a scheme 
to get what He is reluctant to give. Prayer is 
merely contact and trust. About all the prayer a 


34: GOD’S OPEN 


tree offers is: “ Thy will be done!” The fact of 
prayer is its answer. ‘The tree is not after things, 
but life. There is the story of a tree growing on 
a barren rock, but vigourous, and the secret of its 
virility was found to be a root that had run out 
along the foot-bridge over a narrow stream, and 
imbedded itself in the rich soil on the far side. So 
the soul by prayer invades the eternal and feeds on 
the infinite. 

Think of standing as a tree stands. ‘The winds 
blow, but the tree stands. One day from the win- 
dow of a railroad train, I saw a lone tree standing 
in what had been, a few days before, a wood. 
There had been a tornado, and all the trees had 
gone down but this one, which still stood upright 
saluting the heavens. It was a picture of the man 
whose strength is in God, who trusts and prays. 
God is able to hold him up. This was the secret of 
the dauntless courage of John the Baptist. 

The tree tells men how to suffer. Suffering is 
part of its growth. Suffering is God’s discipline 
by which the soul becomes. As you have sat by 
a wood fire on a winter evening, and the flames 
have lapped themselves around the log, you have 
heard the wood sing. Different kinds of trees sing 
different songs. It is so with the life God touches 
in pain and discipline. 

Think of how a tree serves. It never fails, be- 
cause it is planted by the rivers of water. When life 
is barren of service, it is because there is no contact 


LIKE A TREE 35 


with God. If it would serve, it must be served. 
If it is to give out, it must take in. If it would 
minister to others, it must be ministered to itself. 

It is great just to be like a tree. This is the 
promise. It is great to meet the conditions of the 
promise, until the promise becomes a prophecy that 
daily translates itself into a life experience. When 
you pass a tree, if you will listen, you can hear it 
speaking to you. When you lie on the grass, or 
swing in the hammock under the shade of trees, if 
you listen you will find a song in the tree-tops. 
When you drive past the trees on the roadside, if 
you look you will see their branches waving to you 
in friendly fashion. And the thing they are saying 
and singing and waving is always the same. It is 
this: “ God loves you, and if you will live in Him, 
you shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of 
water. Your work shall never fail, and your joy 
shall never wither, and all you do shall prosper! ” 


Hy 
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be 
i f} iH, 





Ill 


A MAN AND A BROOK 


SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE 


Out of the hills of Habersham, 

‘Down the valleys of Hall, 

I hurry amain to reach the plain, 

Run the rapid and leap the fall, 

Split at the rock and together again, 
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, 
And flee from folly on every side 
With a lover’s pain to attain the plain 
Far from the hills of Habersham, 

Far from the valleys of Hall. 


All down the hills of Habersham, 
All through the valleys of Hall, 
The rushes cried: Abide, abide, 
The wilful waterweeds held me thrall, 
The laving laurel turned my tide, 
The ferns and the fondling grass said: Stay, 
The dewberry dipped for to work delay, 
And the little reeds sighed: Abide, abide 
Here in the hills of Habersham, 
Here in the valleys of Hall. 

* * x x x 


But, O, not the hills of Habersham, 

And O, not the valleys of Hall 

Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. 
Downward the voices of Duty call— 
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main. 
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, 
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, 

And the lordly main from beyond the plain 
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham, 

Calls through the valleys of Hall. 


—SIDNEY LANIER. 


iit 
A MAN AND A BROOK 


“ And he drank of the brook.’—I Kincs 17:6. 


HIS is the story of a man and a brook, two 

of the best things in God’s world,—a man, 

God’s best in the world of animate nature, 

and a brook, God’s best in the world of inanimate 
nature. For if man were to perish from the earth, 
existence would return to the jungle; and if the 
brook should cease to run, the desert would reign. 

How wonderful man is! ‘“‘ How nobie in rea- 
son! How infinite in faculty! In form and 
moving how express and admirable! In action 
how like an angel! In apprehension how like 
a god!” 

Man is at the summit of creation. God made 
him a little lower than the angels, and crowned 
him with glory and honour. When God toiled at 
the top of the world, He said: “ Let us make man 
in our image.” Man is the portrait and philosophy 
and promise of all God’s plans and purposes and 
activities. “‘A man shall be as an hiding place 
from the wind and a covert from the tempest; as 
rivers of water in a dry place, and as the shadow 
of a great rock in a weary land.” 


39 


40 GOD’S OPEN 


There in the wilderness, beside the brook Cher- 
ith, down under the broad plateau. on which the 
snowy walls of the temple gleamed in the eastern 
sun, hard by the famous road which ran from 
Jerusalem on the mountain to Jericho in the plain, 
was aman. ‘The glen is quiet. Around are the 
rocks and trees and stillness of nature. In the 
midst of such solitude sits God’s prophet Elijah. 
All is quiet save for the man’s own thoughts and 
the voice of a brook. 

How wonderful a brook is, too! Where does 
the brook come from? It is fed from a hidden 
source whose plenty never fails. The brook defies 
the drought, and conquers and transforms the 
desert. 

What a song it sings as it goes on its way! 
There is no hate nor fear, nor are there any vain 
regrets, in the song of the brook. It sings of the 
beauty of the world, of the glory of life, of the 
shining stars and the radiant sun, as its silvery 
waters murmur over golden sands. 

What wonders it works as it goes on its way! 
It gladdens the world. It fertilizes the soil. It 
blesses and beautifies forest and field. It waters 
the grasses and the flowers. It reflects the day, 
and lets the night go to sleep by its side. The 
clouds rain down their tears, and the brook opens 
its arms and makes the rain-tears of the weeping 
sky its own. 

What a way the brook has! It comes like a 


A MAN AND A BROOK 41 


silver rill from under the roots and rocks, and 
starts down the hill through gorge and glen, 
falling in a shimmering veil of waters from some 
high ledge, resting like a star-eyed goddess in some 
deep transparent pool, giving all and claiming 
naught in return. May we not say of the brook 
as of the man: “A brook shall be as an hiding 
place from the wind and a covert from the tem- 
pest; as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary land”? 

What a journey is before it! It will go where 
man has never been. It will see sights and hear 
voices he has never seen nor heard. It will go into 
unknown lands. It will meet the mighty ocean, 
and embark on sea tides to distant shores where 
people of strange customs will come down to greet 
it with curious welcomes, and wonder what the 
waters of the brook can tell them of that world of 
distance and mystery that dwells beyond the low 
gray screen of the skies. 

And the brook will live on after the man is gone, 
after his body has crumbled into dust. Genera- 
tions will rise and pass and vanish, but the brook 
will still be singing in the glen: 


“Men may come and men may go, 
But I go on forever.” 


There they are, the man and the brook. ‘The 
man is lonely, but he has the brook. It would 
comfort his loneliness and cheer his solitude and 


42 GOD’S OPEN 


strengthen his worn body. It seems to be saying: 
“Let us be friends! There are just the two of us 
out here in God’s open.” Elijah stooped down to 
answer the salute of the waters gliding by. “ And 
he drank of the brook.” 

What does the brook say to the man? Elijah 
has been saying things himself. He has been 
preaching to the nation. The time has come for 
him to listen, to have things said to him. God’s 
preacher is a brook. He has sent his servant to sit 
beside Cherith and listen and meditate and prepare. 
Such seasons come to us all. There are times 
when we need not so much to be telling others as 
to be told ourselves, not so much to talk as to 
listen, to hear the inaudible and elemental voices 
of the world. “ Come ye yourselves apart and rest 
a while.” What did the brook say to the man? 


NEEDS 

I think it said to Elijah: “ You do not need as 
much as you think—yjust a drink from the brook 
and a morsel of bread from a raven’s beak or a 
widow’s table, and your needs are met.” We can 
get along with far less than we imagine. Many of 
our needs are artificial. We manufacture appetites. 
The joy of life is destroyed by our restless quest 
for things we do not need. Life would be happier 
if it were simpler. A rich man once said to me: 
“Could I have my way and follow my tastes, I 
would live very simply in a little house, with 


A MAN AND A BROOK 43 


furniture to meet actual needs, and plain fare on 
the table.” ‘Why not?” I replied. “ Why not 
live as you prefer?” With a sigh he said: “It 
would not please my family.” But why should 
we not train our children to the truer estimate of 
what is best in life? | 

This same complexity crowds into all life. It 
gets into the church. How much of the energy of 
God’s people is absorbed with organizations, and 
how little is given to the one supreme thing God 
wants done, the leading of other lives into fellow- 
ship with Him through Christ!) Many a church is 
organized until it is actually inefficient. Its ener- 
gies are used up in the effort to keep the machinery 
going. 

The best organization is that which work creates, 
not that which is supposed to create work. ‘This is 
the brook’s way. It makes its own channel. The 
channel does not make the brook. And the brook 
makes a beautiful channel for itself. I came on a 
stream one day which suddenly changed from wild 
beauty to tame monotony. First it was winding in 
and out among the trees between grassy banks, the 
stones in its bed making musical the falling waters, 
as the bydok went singing on its way. Then the 
stream suddenly emerged upon a section that ran 
straight across a field, the banks bare and the 
waters slow and sullen, flowing in muddy silence. 
A man had changed the course of the stream, and 
in doing so, had robbed it of its beauty. Nature is 


AAG GOD’S OPEN 


the great artist. If we would live closer to the 
simple heart of nature, if there were less of com- 
plexity and artificiality, we should find that what 
the brook said to the prophet is true. We do not 
need as much as we imagine. 


THE BEST THINGS FOR ALL 

The brook is saying that there are some things 
which cannot be monopolized. Many of the ills 
of life arise from man’s effort to corner the 
market, to monopolize instead of share. Some 
people are cleverer than others. They seem to suc- 
ceed. ‘They capture the best sites and the biggest 
incomes. 

But God is more clever than these clever souls 
who would monopolize the franchise of happiness. 
He has fixed life so that the best things are for all. 
‘You cannot corner sunshine. You cannot monopo- 
lize air and scenery. You cannot bottle up the 
brook. One day a millionaire tried to buy a brook, 
and thought he had succeeded. But after a while, 
the brook said: “I am weary of the rich man’s 
lawn,” and it slipped away to run beside a poor 
man’s garden. It is thus with love, and peace, and 
faith, and with God Himself. ‘There is no such 
thing as a monopoly of the best. 

Hence there can be no real poverty in the world. 
We would understand this if we could only realize 
what we need and what we own. One has nothing 
in the bank, but he may have what no bank can 


A MAN AND A BROOK 45 


hold. He may have the brook. He may have 
enough to meet his elemental needs. He may have 
the world. If so, why should he be unhappy? 
Elijah was not disconsolate there in the glen. He 
was happier than Ahab in his palace. Thank God 
for a world in which the best things belong to 
everybody! 


GOD'S CARE 

The brook tells the man that God takes care of 
those who trust Him. It said to Elijah: “God 
always takes care of me. I never worry. I never 
wonder where the water is coming from. Some- 
how it always comes. I merely trust. One day a 
man came and stood there on the bank and said: 
‘Brook, you had better save; there is going to be 
a drought; you will need what you are giving 
away; you had better hoard some of the water 
while you can.’ But a lily on the bank said: ‘ The 
man speaks falsely. I do not toil nor spin. I 
simply trust in God, and He never fails me.’ Then 
a bird in a tree on the bank of the brook said: 
| The lily speaks the truth. God takes care of those 
who put their trust in Him.’ I believed the flowers 
and the birds instead of the man; and the water 
has never failed.” 

Nor did God fail Elijah. He had been predict- 
ing three years of drought. He had been saying 
that no rain would fall, but there was plenty of 
water in the glen where the brook ran. God was 


46 GOD’S OPEN 


taking care of Elijah. To be sure, the man needed 
bread as well as drink, but God was supplying that, 
too. There was the widow of Zarephath, whose 
cruse of oil and barrel of flour failed not. The 
brook was in the barrel as well as in the glen. It 
told the same story of God’s unfailing care for 
those who put their trust in Him. 

It is always so. God can be trusted. He will 
not fail us. There may be years of famine. There 
may be exile and want. There may be hard times. 
They are sent to test faith. 


“TI know not where God’s islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 
But this I know: I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care.” 


This covers all human need. There is a hunger 
which the widow’s cake could not feed, a thirst 
which the brook Cherith could not quench. But 
God has made provision for these, also. There is 
never a longing but He has an answer. If your 
hunger is holy, God will satisfy it. If your thirst 
is clean, God will send a limpid brook to splash its 
spray on your tired feet, and call to your parched 
lips: “ Stoop down and drink and live!” 


THE BROOK FOR THE SPIRIT 
There is a brook for the spirit as well as for the 
flesh. Man is more than flesh. He is immortal 
spirit. He has processes which cannot be reduced 


A MAN AND A BROOK AT 


to any ritual of the senses. He has powers which 
function in a realm whose reach transcends the 
sky-line. He has longings which cannot be teth- 
ered to earth and time. God is not oblivious 
of these. 

For the soul, there is the living water. For 
man’s eternal needs “there is a river the streams 
whereof make glad the city of God.” For the 
immortal spirit there is the fountain of life. Isaiah 
was thinking of the spiritual when he said: “ Ho, 
everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!”’ 
John was calling us to drink of this brook when 
he wrote: “And the Spirit and the bride say, 
Come; and let him that heareth say, Come; and 
let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, 
let him take the water of life freely.” And Jesus 
was proclaiming the living water when He said: . 
“Tf any man thirst, let him come unto me and 
drink.” 

It would be strange for God to provide for the 
body that dies, and not for the spirit that is im- 
mortal,—to be concerned for our lower appetites 
and to neglect the sublime and God-like part of our 
natures. But it is stranger still for man to drink 
of the brook that quenches physical thirst, and to 
decline to drink of the water of life. Yet this is 
what many are doing. Christ offers the cup of 
salvation, but some strangely thrust it aside and 
decline the chalice of life. The brook bids us drink 
and live. 


48 GOD’S OPEN 


WORKING DAYS AHEAD 


The brook says to the prophet: ‘‘ There is work 
yet for you to do. It is for this that God has 
brought us together. You cannot die. There are 
great days ahead. Great deeds await you. Carmel 
is on the horizon.» Horeb is on the sky-line.” 
Elijah must be ready. And so the brook prepares 
the man for a new day of service. 

This is what it means when God gives us a 
brook, when He reinforces and rejuvenates. Days 
and deeds await us. It is pre-eminently so of the 
living water, for Jesus said: “ The water that I 
shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life.” 

Is the brook springing within us? What are we 
doing for the world? God is generous to us. Are 
we parsimonious to others? If so, we have sinned 
against the brook. Some morning we may seek it 
and find that it has left us, for the brook will not 
dwell with a selfish life. 


DESTINY 

The brook speaks of destiny. The pulses of the 
ocean are beating in the brook. It has never seen 
the sea. It has never heard the roar of its waters, 
nor watched the tide as it breaks on the beach. 
But the sea is calling to the brook. In the ripples 
which eddy to its curving banks are the miniature 
tides of world oceans, and in the gurgle of the 
silvery waters as they slip around the smooth stones 


A MAN AND A BROOK 4,9 


in the brook’s bed is the prophecy of the shouting 
waves of the wild, wide sea. 

In man’s soul the pulses of an eternal life are 
beating. Destiny calls. Somewhere on the far line 
of being, the brook and the sea meet in human 
experience. Death is not the end, It is merely 
escape from limitations. It is life widening out 
into the great beyond. 


“Ti I stoop into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud, 
It is but for a time; 
I press God’s lamp close to my heart, 
Its splendours soon or late will pierce the gloom, 
I shall emerge somewhere.” 


As we emerge, we find that the brook has not 
left us. It has only grown to a great river, which 
runs by the throne of God, and on its banks are 
gathered from all lands those whom love of God 
has blessed. 

“He drank of the brook.” ‘The man and the 
brook,—they are not all. There is God. He is 
ever with them. He has made the man and the 
brook for each other, but He has made both for 
Himself; and the brook never dies, and the man 
lives forever, because back of all seas, and bigger 
than humanity, is the God Whose eye “ slumbers 
not nor sleeps,’ and Whose kind care shepherds 
His flock by the banks of the river in “ the land o’ 
the leal.”’ 


las 


gay 





IV 


THE FIRST BREAKFAST 


THE PRESENCE 


Risen Master, fain would we, 
Sharing those unearthly days, 
Morn and eve, on shore and sea, 
Watch thy movements, mark thy ways; 


Catch by faith each glad surprise 
Of thy footsteps drawing nigh; 

Hear thy sudden greeting rise, 
‘Peace be'to you! Itis Dh” 


Secrets of thy kingdom learn, 
Read the vision open spread, 

Feel thy word within us burn, 
Know thee in the broken Bread. 


—Jackson Mason. 


IV 
THE FIRST BREAKFAST 


“ Jesus saith unto them, Come and break your fast.” 
—JOHN 21:12, 


FTEN the Church speaks of the Last Sup- 
per, occasionally of the first breakfast. 
We feel that Jesus is with us when we 
break bread in sacramental remembrance of Him, 
but we are not so conscious of His Presence in the 
common meal, when we eat to satisfy our hunger 
and to strengthen our bodies for the daily task. 
Jesus is present at both meals. There are those 
who recognize His Presence at the communion 
table in the sanctuary, but who never think of the 
unseen Guest at the table in their own homes. 
There are Christians who are most devout as the 
sacramental emblems are passed, but they have no 
word of thanks to Him Who gives us unfailingly 
our daily bread. “ Jesus saith unto them, Come 
and break your fast.” 

What a lovely scene the closing chapter of John’s 
gospel presents! The purpose of this gospel, as 
John tells us in the closing paragraph of the 
twentieth chapter, is to present the deity of Jesus, 


53 


54 GOD’S OPEN 


“that we might believe that Jesus the Christ is the 
Son of God; and that believing, we might have life 
through his name.” But could anything be more 
human than Jesus as the curtain falls in the 
twenty-first chapter? He is standing on the lake 
shore. He is building a camp-fire. He is cook- 
ing the fish and calling tired men, wearied by a 
night of fruitless toil, to come and eat. It is as 
though John would say: “ He is divine because 
He is human.” It is as if he would make His 
humanity the climax of his argument for His 
deity. The Last Supper was holy. The first 
breakfast is also holy. 

We have pictures of the Last Supper. I wish 
someone would paint a picture of the first break- 
fast. Great masters have glorified their art by 
placing on canvas that scene in the upper room 
when Jesus instituted the Holy Supper. I wish 
some master hand would mix the colours and set 
brush to canvas that we might look upon that little 
group gathered about the camp-fire on the sands 
of Genessaret in the gray light of the slow dawn. 
The same faces are in both pictures. There are not 
quite so many in the first breakfast as in the Last 
Supper. Judas Iscariot is not there, and there are 
four others who are absent. But seven are present, 
—Peter, dripping wet, because he could not wait 
for the slow boat to land him at Jesus’ feet; and 
John, the first to recognize that it was the Lord; 
and James; and Thomas, with his doubts gone for- 


THE FIRST BREAKFAST 55 


ever; and Nathaniel, and two others. There they 
are around the camp-fire, with the boat yonder 
dragged half way out on the sand, and the miracle 
catch of fishes piled up where the curious can see 
them, and the breakfast waiting, and over it all the 
glory of the risen Christ, Who has come back for 
a bit of old-time fellowship in God’s open with the 
men He loves. The Last Supper has its lessons, 
but surely the first breakfast also has its lessons. 
What would it teach us? 


OUT OF DOORS 


It takes us out of doors. That is one thing that 
makes it great. Thank God for the open, for the 
fields and forests, for the hills and plains and the 
tall peaks that seem so friendly with heaven, for 
the grasses and trees and rocks, for running rivers 
and shining lakes and the bounding sea, for flowers 
and the scent of new-mown hay and the tang in 
the morning air! Thank God for all that makes 
the world so beautiful, and for the chance now and 
then to.get off of the metal pavements man has 
made, and away from the ugly houses men have 
built, out into God’s open! 

It was Charles Dickens who said: “ There is a 
soothing influence in the sight of the earth and the 
sky, which God put into them for our relief when 
He made the world in which we are all to suffer 
and strive and die.” I love a book that takes me 
out of doors. I love the story of Jesus for the 


56 GOD’S OPEN 


same reason. It is arresting to notice how much 
of Christ’s life was spent in the open. 

What a scene is this by Galilee’s murmuring 
waves in the dewy morning! Yonder in the dim 
distance are the eastern hills, and beyond the hills, 
the reddening sky, as the sun comes on to bring 
the waiting world its new day. ‘This side the hills 
are the deep blue waters of the little lake, some- 
times lashed into storm, but placid now, and dark 
with that strange colour which tells of birth amid 
the snows. Yonder and there perhaps on the sea 
are other sails where fishermen are at work, but 
without Christ to show them how; and here on the 
shore are the trees and rocks, and maybe the song 
of a bird, and certainly the merry crackle of a 
blaze and the delicious odour of the waiting break- 
fast, and His own dear voice saying: “ Come 
and dine!” 

Yes, I like God’s book of nature. I like the 
shrine that is to be found out of doors. No one 
can be very wicked who seeks God there, but if 
you are to find God there, you must have Him 
within. You can find God on the golf links, but 
you must first have Him in your heart. You will 
not find Him in the church unless you have Him 
in your heart. Merely admiring the beauty of 
nature is not worship. “God is a spirit, and they 
that worship him must worship him in spirit and 
in truth.” Therefore, we are not prepared to wor- 
ship in God’s open until we have shut the door and 


THE FIRST BREAKFAST 57 


prayed to our Father in secret, and “the Father 
Who seeth in secret shall reward us openly.” 


THE MEAL JESUS PREPARED 

The first breakfast was a meal prepared by 
Christ Himself. Everything was ready when the 
disciples reached the spot. For the sake of good 
comradeship, Jesus took of the fish which they had 
caught and added them to the meal He had pre- 
pared. Christ had a breakfast of bread and fish 
waiting. He knew His friends would be hungry. 
He had anticipated their physical needs, and He 
was ready. 

Jesus is not above thinking about and planning 
for and providing for our common needs. It is 
something to Him that people get tired and hungry 
and broken down in health, that they need clothes 
and shelter and bread. He was thinking of these 
things as He went about doing good. He fed the 
multitudes. He did not stop at this, He started 
with it. And He does not stop when He becomes 
the risen Christ. That is the point to be noticed 
at the first breakfast. One might conclude that 
Christ had gotten past all this. He is too spiritual 
now. When He was a poor man and walking the 
dusty road and sitting tired and thirsty beside 
Jacob’s well, it was to be expected. But surely He 
is past physical hunger now. Yes, but His dis- 
ciples are not. 

And so there is religion in feeding the hungry, 


88 GOD’S OPEN 


in giving a cup of water to the thirsty, in nursing 
sick people, in visiting prisoners, in contributing to 
famine relief, in pushing in between little children 
and starvation. ‘These were the cries moaning 
there as the waves of Galilee broke on the sands. 
Jesus heard them, and still hears them, and He 
wants His followers to hear them and build their 
camp-fire and call to the starving of earth, in the 
name of the risen Christ: ‘“‘ Come and break your 
fast!” 


SEVEN DEFEATED MEN 

The guests at the first breakfast were seven de- 
feated men. They have lost their vision. A while 
ago they were thinking of a kingdom and a king. 
They were dreaming of returning glory for their 
nation. ‘They had a vision so fine and fair that 
they had left all to follow Jesus. ‘They were fol- 
lowing the gleam. They, too, had seen a star, and 
the star had summoned them from their old tasks 
to a world career. But the star is gone now. The 
sky is black as midnight. Their dream is dead. 
Peter said: “Iam going fishing. I have idled long 
enough. I will play the fool no more. It is high 
time we were getting back to work.’’ And the 
others said: “ We are going with you.” What a 
journey it was back to the old life! What a dismal 
hour when they tried to get out the boats and the 
nets once more! These are the things they had 
cast aside. This is what Peter meant when he 


THE FIRST BREAKFAST 59 


said: “‘ Lord, we have left all to follow thee.” 
They have come back to this!) What a collapse! 

They have failed even as fishermen. They can- 
not so much as do what they used to do. They 
have forgotten how. They have toiled all night 
and caught nothing. ‘Time was when their boats 
led the way on Galilee, but they are coming in 
empty this morning. They are not only not 
apostles, they are not even decent fishermen. They 
are the laughing-stock of their old competitors. 
This is not all. 

They are worse than failures. They are sinners. 
Each man is conscious of his shame. Certainly 
Peter was. He has denied his Lord. He can never 
hold up his head again. And the other men are not 
much better, for in the Saviour’s darkest hour they 
all forsook Him and fled. Every one of them had 
deserted his Master. Even John could do no better 
than to follow afar off. This is the defeat that 
was most bitter. It is where all of us fail, for all 
have sinned. ‘These are the men who are climbing 
out of the boat and coming toward the camp-fre. 
What does Jesus want with them? What can He 
do with such men? They have had their chance 
and failed. Ah, but Christ is calling, and still 
calls to defeated men: “Come and break your 
fast!”’ 


THE CONQUERING CHRIST 
While the guests are defeated, the Host is 


60 GOD’S OPEN 


victorious. In the Last Supper it was Christ on 
His way to the garden, to Gethsemane, to arrest 
and trial, Christ on His way to Pilate’s judgment 
hall, to the cross and to the tomb. But in the first 
breakfast it is Christ Who has been to Calvary, 
Who has risen from the tomb, Who has conquered 
death, and Who is now on His way to ascension, 
to enthronement and coronation. The men are de- 
feated, but their Leader is not. A new day is 
dawning for Christ’s disciples. 

The first breakfast tells us of the conquering 
Christ. He is with us always. He is equal to our 
needs. We cannot make our demands too great. 
Already for the seven He has changed the night of 
fruitless toil into a morning of unprecedented suc- 
cess. ‘This is what He is doing all the time for 
His followers. Let us not be afraid to put Him to 
the test. Sir Walter Raleigh had gone to Queen 
Elizabeth with some new request, and she said: 
“When are you going to stop asking for things? ” 
sir Walter replied: “When the queen stops giv- 
ing.’ And so with our sovereign Saviour. All 
power is His. He bids us put Him to the test, and 
the promise which is bright with victory abides for 
His disciples in all ages: “Lo, I am with you 
alway.” 

It used to be a custom in the colleges and uni- 
versities of England and Scotland when honorary 
degrees were conferred and the candidate was 
present for his doctorate, to indulge in horse-play. 


THE FIRST BREAKFAST 61 


When the university conferred the degree of 
Doctor of Laws on David Livingston, the custom 
was not carried out. The students were there 
with their peas and pop-guns, and lungs loaded for 
the usual performance, but as the lank, gaunt figure 
of the missionary stood up before them, his face 
tanned by the hot African suns and furrowed by 
sixteen years of exposure to the wilderness, and 
his arm limp at his side from the bite of a lion 
that left him lamed for life, a hush fell on the 
student body. ‘They were in the presence of a man 
bigger than any honour their university could 
confer. Suddenly Livingston began to plead with 
the students to give their lives to the service of 
God in the Dark Continent, and then in a voice 
tense with the deepest feeling, he said: “ The thing 
which has sustained me through all these years, and 
has kept me at my post, was the promise of my 
Leader, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world.’” There is as much for every 
missionary, for every follower of the conquering 
Christ. 


THE NEW CAMPAIGN 


Jesus was starting a new campaign that morn- 
ing by the lake. He was talking to the seven, but 
He was thinking of the world. He was looking 
past the lake, past the distant eastern hills to the 
needy world, to those in darkness and in the 
shadow of death. They must be reached, and He 


62 GOD’S OPEN 


is telling these men whom He has invited to break- 
fast that He does not want them to be fishermen, 
but evangelists. 

He proceeds to equip them for the campaign. 
They have finished breakfast, and now Jesus turns 
to Peter and says: “ Peter, do you love me?” ‘The 
othes are listening. Peter hangs his head in 
shame. If Christ had only taken him to one side 
and talked with him in private about his disgrace, 
about his apostasy on that awful night! But, no, 
He is dragging it out there before them all. I 
think at first it was in a whisper that Peter replied: 
“Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.” But 
Jesus will not have a whisper. He keeps at him 
until he shouts it out so that all can hear: “ Thou 
knowest that I love thee!” ‘They have their les- 
son. Love is what they need. If they are to go to 
the needy world they must go in love, and if they 
go in love, they will not fail. Love is the power 
that is to transform the world, and it is not just 
love for the work, it 1s love for Christ. In the city 
of Stargard, Germany, there is a great cathedral, 
St. Mary’s, and it is said that if a speaker wants to 
be heard, he must keep his eyes fixed on a picture 
of the Christ attached to a column in front of the 
pulpit. Jesus is telling the men around the camp- 
fire that if they are to reach the needy world they 
must keep their hearts fixed on Him. 

This is the message of the first breakfast. In 
the Last Supper Jesus said: “‘ Remember me.” In 


THE FIRST BREAKFAST 63 
the first breakfast He said: “ Feed my sheep.” He 


wants us to remember Him that we may feed His 
sheep. He would have us love Him that we may 
bring the lost world back to Him Who loved it and 
died for it. “Feed my sheep.” Christ wants the 
world shepherded. “I could make a better world 
than this, myself,’ said some petulant skeptic. 
“That is precisely what we are for and why we 
are here,” was the reply. The new campaign that 
started from that camp-fire by Galilee was a cam- 
paign for the new heavens and the new earth, and 
Christ will not be satisfied until His sheep are 
shepherded and the last lamb of God’s great flock 
has been safely gathered into the fold. 


PR A Wa 
He taal Rah 
Le iM 





Vv 


THE SPRING BY THE SIDE OF 
THE ROAD 


A WISH 


Mine be a cot beside the hill; 

A bee-hive’s hum shall soothe my ear; 
A willowy brook that turns a mill 

With many a fall shall linger near. 


The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch 
Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; 
Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch 
And share my meal, a welcome guest. 


Around my ivied porch shall spring 

Fach fragrant flower that drinks the dew; 
And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing 

In russet gown and apron blue. 


The village church among the trees, 

Where first our marriage vows were given, 
With merry peals shall swell the breeze, 

And point with taper spire to heaven. 


—SAMUEL ROGERS. 


Vv 


THE SPRING BY THE SIDE, OF 
THE ROAD 


“Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst.’—JOHN 4: 14. 


LONG journey, a hot day, the blistering 
sun, and the stifling dust; weary, spent; 
then, there by the side of the road a crystal 
spring gushes from the rock, and you stoop down 
and drink and live. Your thirst is quenched. 
Your tired body revives. Rested and refreshed, 
you are ready for the road again. This is what 
the spring by the side of the road has been doing 
through the long years. It was there before you 
were born, and it will be there long after you are 
dead. It has been doing this for all who came its 
way, for the rich and the poor, for saint and sinner, 
for citizen and criminal. It asks no questions. It 
makes no charge. It seems to say: “ Come again!” 
Don’t you remember the day you stopped beside 
such a spring? Poor indeed is he who does not 
know a spring by the side of the road, who has 
not somewhere hanging on memory’s wall this 
picture! 


67 


68 GOD'S OPEN 


If you would know the value of a spring or a 
well, you must go to a desert country. You must 
cross what used to be called “the great American 
desert,” and see how, slowly, but surely, its sterile 
sands have become waving green fields of wide- 
stretching, fertile farms, and its arid wastes have 
blossomed into productive gardens. Irrigation is 
the magician’s wand that has brought about the 
transformation. 

After a long ride of many hours one hot sum- 
mer day through the stifling heat and baking sand, 
across the barren desert which stretches for miles 
on either side of the Santa Fe railroad before it 
reaches Southern California, suddenly in the midst 
of that dead world our train pulled into a station 
where for a few acres there was a perfect oasis. 
Trees cast grateful shade as a protection from the 
blistering heat. Flowers were blooming, and vege- 
tables growing in the gardens. The green turf 
spread a carpet of velvet over the station yard. 
About the doorway and windows vines were cling- 
ing and climbing in trellised beauty and luxuriance. 
What had created that little Eden hard by death’s 
valley? <A well of water, that was all. And wher- 
ever you can get a well or a spring, the desert is 
conquered. 

' This is the story Jesus told the woman by 
Jacob’s well. The spring speaks not only of itself, 
but of the desert stretches in human life, and of 
the effect of Christian service on the desert. The 


SPRING BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD 69 


Christian is to be a spring by the side of the 
road, a well hard by death’s valley. His mission 
is to change Sahara into an oasis, until barren- 
ness becomes fertility, and the desolate waste is 
transformed into a tropical garden of fruits and 
flowers. 

The people who lived in that eastern land on the 
edge of the desert could appreciate a spring per- 
haps as Occidentals do not. To them, there was 
no blessing like a well of water. It made the 
difference between famine and plenty, between 
riches and want. Again and again do we find them 
describing the blessings of salvation under the fig- 
ure of a well. “ Who passing through the valley 
of Baca maketh it a well.”* “The mouth of a 
righteous man is a well of life.’ { He is a spring 
by the side of the road. It is not strange that when 
Jesus wanted to portray the blessings of the Chris- 
tian life, He uses the same figure. To those 
dwellers under a fiery sun where famine was the 
constant fear, and thirst terrible to man and beast, 
He said: “ Whosoever drinketh of the water that 
I shall give him shall never thirst,’ and then to 
those who have quenched their thirst and enriched 
their own lives with the blessings of salvation, He 
says: “The water that I shall give him shall be in 
him a well of water springing up into everlasting 
life.” Christ’s disciple is the spring by the side 
of the road. 
~* Psalms 84:6, f Proverbs 10:11. 


70 GOD’S OPEN 


THE VALUE OF SALVATION 


The value of salvation is not merely or chiefly 
its value to those who receive it. This is some- 
thing, to be sure. It is something to get our own 
souls saved, our own sins forgiven, our own: thirst 
quenched, our little desert watered and made to bud 
and blossom. It is something to have our own 
hearts filled with joy and peace and hope, and to 
feel that, whatever comes, we are insured against 
disaster. 

There are some who stop here. They never get 
over being saved themselves. It was such a de- 
licious shock to their souls that they would cherish 
the thrill forever, and talk about it the remainder 
of their days. Their spiritual repertory has but 
one tune,—their conversion. On every occasion 
they relate their experience and tell what great 
things the Lord has done for them. 

Sometimes, however, the Christian who is so 
fond of telling his own experience becomes a back- 
slider to the extent that he begins to doubt whether 
he was ever really converted. Then the brethren 
must begin all over again with him. What is re- 
sponsible for his collapse? It is not accidental. 
The Christian who stops with getting his own soul 
saved will not stay where he stops very long. He 
will not keep what he gets unless he goes further. 
He must advance or he will backslide. 

The value of salvation is not chiefly to those who 
receive it, but through those who receive it. If the 


SPRING BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD 71 


desert in the individual life is not to lapse into 
sterility, it must become productive. The desert 
beyond must be conquered. Of course one must 
have before he can give. You cannot pour out of 
an empty cup. You cannot pump water from a 
well that is dry. Here is the trouble with Chris- 
tians who do nothing. They have a name to live, 
but that is all they have. There never was any 
water in the well. It was just a hole in the ground, 
and a sign saying: “This is a well. -This is a 
Christian.” But if it is a real well, if the diggers 
have struck water, if one’s soul has been refreshed 
with salvation, he must not stop with quenching 
his own thirst. 

Christ teaches that when He saves, it is not 
merely to bless the individual who is saved. It is 
that, of course, but salvation goes further. It at- 
tacks the desert beyond. The well does not exist 
to quench its own thirst, to minister to its own 
need, to admire its own charms and powers, to 
drown itself in its own tides. It exists to water 
the world, to baffle sterile sands and wake barren 
wastes into fertility and beauty. 


BLESSED TO BLESS 
Jesus intends everyone He blesses not only to be 
blessed, but to be a blessing. This is the very 
genius of Christianity. It is not a proselyting 
religion, although it is often exploited as such. It 
is a missionary religion. Christ’s disciples are to 


72 GOD’S OPEN 


be concerned to reach people not that they may 
embrace certain dogmas or conform to certain 
rituals, but that they may share the blessings Christ 
has bestowed. 

We are not redeemed to guard relics, to maintain 
holy traditions, to see that what has been still is, 
“and ever shall be, world without end, amen.” In 
Jerusalem there is an abbot whose holy calling is 
to stand guard over the bones of the saints. It is 
not recorded of him that he has any living products 
to his credit. There are churches whose standard 
of efficiency is very much like that of the Jerusa- 
lem abbot. They guard the dead. They are a part 
of the desert themselves. 

We are not redeemed that we may provide our- 
selves with spiritual privileges, that we may feed 
our own souls, that we may draw as much water . 
out of the well of salvation as we need, and pour 
back any left over. Some never get beyond this. 
Some churches are mutual admiration societies. 
They do not want the desert watered. They pay 
the bills, and are entitled to all the water them- 
selves. Such churches are the despair of Christ. 

We are blessed to bless, to live a life of service; 
not to get to heaven by the quickest and easiest 
route, but to make the territory through which we 
pass as much like heaven as possible. The Amazon 
River rises one hundred and fifty miles from the 
Pacific. By flowing westward, it could soon run its 
course and reach the sea; but it turns eastward, 


SPRING BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD 73 


doubling and winding for two thousand miles, re- 
claiming the desert, watering vast stretches of land, 
creating great forests and wonderful wealth of 
soil, widening at its mouth into a great sea and 
driving its waters five hundred miles into the ocean. ' 
It is a picture of what Christ means His disciple to 
be in the world. He is not to run his course by the: 
cheapest route. He is to be like a well in the desert. 
He is to be like a spring by the side of the road, 
that never reminds us of past favours, that never 
stints, that gives with a song, and the more it gives, 
the more it has to give. 
This is the song of the spring: 


“ Give, give, be always giving, 
Who gives not is not living, 
The more we give the more we live.” 


God hates meanness. 


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SPRING 


Christ asks us to be a blessing because it does not 
impoverish us. Your blessing is not hurt by be- 
coming a blessing. It does not injure the well to 
have its water drawn out. There is no danger of 
making the spring run dry by dipping a cup of 
crystal from its sparkling pool. It is not necessary 
to be parsimonious. ‘Thank God salvation is one 
realm where one need not practice economy, where 
he may be a glorious spender, because the fountain 
is inexhaustible, everlasting! 


74 GOD'S OPEN 


Christ wants us to be a blessing because it is the 
only way we can keep our blessing unimpaired. It 
not only does not hurt the well to be used, but 
service is the well’s salvation. Were it not used its 
waters would become dangerous. Use keeps the 
waters sweet and fresh. If one’s redemption is to 
be a spring, and not a stagnant pond, he must be 
forever in the business of trying to bless others. 
The man who hoards his religion is to blame for 
its becoming stale. 

_ It is the only way to enjoy salvation. We used 
to sing of giving the gospel to the heathen to 
keep them from perishing. It was rather a self- 
righteous attitude. The posture is passing. We 
have discovered that we are to give the gospel to 
the heathen to keep from perishing ourselves. 
Some do not get much out of salvation. They 
have been redeemed with great difficulty. They 
are going to heaven when they die. But they find 
the journey tiresome. They expect to be in the 
general assembly and church of the first-born, but 
they are in no hurry to claim their seat. They 
have laid up treasures where moth and rust do not 
corrupt and where thieves do not break through 
nor steal, and they are entirely satisfied to leave 
these treasures where they are laid up. The trouble 
with such good souls is, they are traveling in a 
private car all by their dear, lonely, unfriendly, un- 
neighbourly, selfish selves. No wonder they some- 
times get tired of their own company. The way 


SPRING BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD 75 


to be happy is to make others happy. There is no 
other way for God nor man. We must quit trying 
to quench our thirst with our own joys. No 
creature can live in its own secretions. 

God wants us to be a blessing to others because 
it is the only way to go on in the Christian life. 
Service is the secret of growth and development. 
The more one gives away, the more he has left. 
“Give and it shall be given unto you.” Some of 
us have nothing but stale blessings. There are 
those who have been nibbling at the same old crust 
for a decade. They have never given away any- 
thing. Their religious experience has become so 
stale that nobody wants it. For every bucket you 
draw out of the well, a fresh one takes its place. It 
is the same in Christian life. It is still true that 
heaven’s manna spoils when hoarded. 

The spring by the side of the road teaches us 
the only way to cure our defects and mend our 
failures. It is not what we have, but what we do 
with what we have, that is important. It is not 
always how we get it, but what we are doing with 
it. Senator Dolliver was once asked if it was wrong 
for the church to take tainted money. After two 
days’ study of the question, he replied: “ Yes, take 
it and use it. Money, like water, purifies itself by 
circulation.” ‘The world is to be conquered by 
being blessed. 

It is also the way to keep in fellowship with the 
Great Giver. What we do for others, we do for 


76 -GOD’S OPEN 


Christ, Who said: “ Inasmuch as ye have done it 
urito one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 
done it unto me.” When one gets that standard 
of giving, he gives as the spring by the side of the 
road gives,—not what he can spare, not even what 
the people need; but he gives his all. He gives his 
best. And he gives for the joy of giving. 

This is the secret of the Christian life,—not 
simply the secret of a happy life, or even of a use- 
ful life, not the secret of privilege and power and 
victory, but just the secret of the Christian life. 
There is no such thing as being a Christian with- 
out conquering the desert, and do not forget that 
_the desert is never far away. A rich man who 
desired to become interested in personal work, who 
was not satisfied merely to give his money, asked 
the charity organization of his city to assign him a 
family. On his first visit, he discovered that the 
poor woman toward whom he was to be friendly 
was none other than the scrub-woman in his own 
office. The desert is near, and the method of the 
spring by the side of the road is, to begin to con- 
quer that part of the desert which is nearest, and 
to begin at once! 


VI 


GOING FISHING 


THE ANGLER’S INVITATION 


Come when the leaf comes, angle with me, 
Come when the bee hums over the lea, 

Come with the wild flowers— 

Come with the wild showers— 

Come when the singing bird calleth for thee! 


Then to the stream side gladly we’ll hie, 
Where the gray trout glide silently by, 
Or in some still place 

Over the hill face 

Hurrying onward, drop the light fly. 


Then, when the dew falls, homeward we'll speed 

To our own loved walls down on the mead, 

There, by the bright hearth, 

Holding our night mirth, 

We'll drink to sweet friendship in need and in deed. 
—THOMAS Top STODDART. 


wa 
GOING FISHING 


“ Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a-fishing. They 
say unto him, We also go with thee.’—Joun 21: 3. 

“Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will 
make you to become fishers of men.’—Mark 1: 17. 


AM sorry for the man who never goes fish- 

ing,—who does not know what it is to bait a 

hook and cast a line, and wait for that strange 
electric thrill to leap from the stream up line and 
rod, up arm and spine, into his nerve centers, 
when something down there out of sight begins 
to play with the bait. I am sorry for the man 
who never sits on the bank under the shade of 
trees and listens to the shining river sing its 
song, and to the birds sing theirs in the treetops, 
while he forgets all his cares and waits for the 
fish to bite. 


THE APOSTOLIC SPORT 
Peter was in the depths of despondency. His 
day dream had run out. His castle in the air had 
toppled down. He had seen Christ crucified, the 
Conqueror of death apparently conquered. They 
had laid the Lord’s body in the tomb. Christ’s 
79 


80 GOD’S OPEN 


disciples were face to face with grim despair. 
They had thought that it was He Who should 
restore Israel, but now that thought is dead. If 
ever there was a group of men in the depths of 
gloom, it was these men who had staked all on 
Christ, and lost. What shall they do? 

Peter has a suggestion and offers a program. 
He says unto them: “I go a-fishing. I must get 
away from all this. I must go where I can think. 
I must get back where I started, and begin over 
again. I need the sound of the sea, and the tang 
of the wind, and the pull of the nets, and the jump 
of the fish. If my mind is to clear and my nerves 
steady, I must go fishing.” 

The others said to him: “It is the thing to do. 
We also go with thee.” They did not argue the 
matter. They did not hesitate nor deliberate. 
They went. I can see them getting ready to go, 
the bustle of preparation, and I can see them going. 
There is a new look in their faces. Care is fading 
out. Despair is loosening its grip. The soul of 
the fisherman is shining in their faces. There is 
an eagerness, an expectancy, a feeling of good 
fellowship. Already their tired, sore hearts begin 
to heal of their hurt. 

I can see them fishing, and almost feel as if I 
wanted to go there, too. They are getting hold 
of themselves again. You can hear them talking to 
each other. They are not having much luck with 
the fish, but unconsciously they are climbing back 


GOING FISHING 81 


to Christ. Soon He stands on the shore and calls. 
He is telling them how to cast the net. It is as if 
the Master would say: “I must get into this game 
myself. I, too, would go a-fishing.” And now 
the great catch, and breakfast on the beach, and 
“Lovest thou me?” The apostles are re-commis- 
sioned, and soon they are off again on their work 
of soul-winning and world-building. 


THE CALL OF THE WILD 

It is a great thing just to go fishing. The other 
day a friend of mine came in from a sheet of water 
which need not be located, and laid five bass on the 
scales that tipped the balance at twenty-five and a 
half pounds. What difference did it make to him 
as to who was elected President, or what had be- 
come of the strike, or whether pay-day was next 
week or next year? He had caught five fish 
which averaged over five pounds each. What else 
mattered? 

I met a friend on the train at daybreak one 
morning. He was getting along in years. The 
gray was showing on’ his brow. His shoulders 
were stooped. But he looked like a boy that morn- 
ing. I asked: “ Where are you going so early?”’ 
and he leaned over and said in a whisper what 
Peter said to the disciples long ago: “I go 
a-fishing.” 

I am sorry for the man who never hears that 
call, who never has the passion for adventure 


82 GOD’S OPEN 


waken in his soul, who is not always something of 
a boy. 


“ Backward, turn backward, O time, in thy flight.” 


Here are some of the things which take place 
when one goes a-fishing: Care leaves him. He is 
getting away from the sense of responsibility. The 
mind stops grinding in on itself. There is a let-up 
in the friction of life, and the fisherman comes 
home rested and ready for work. 

Fishing kindles the imagination. Imagination is 
the creative faculty——I was about to say the re- 
creative! How it riots on a fishing trip! What 
pictures it paints of the monsters of the deep that 
run off with the bait! Puck once published a car- 
toon of two slightly intoxicated men who were 
balancing themselves on a landing at the fishing 
club. There on the wall in a glass case was the 
effigy of a big fish. They gazed at it for a mo- 
ment, and then one said to the other: “‘ The man 
who caught that fish is a liar!”” Maybe the Lord 
will be a bit patient with the fibs of the fisher- 
men. ‘They are the product of an overwrought 
imagination. 

It makes one human to go fishing. It makes 
him companionable and charitable toward his fel- 
lows. It seems to release certain qualities of 
human nature which well-nigh cease to function in 
the cold realm of gain and under the stern grind 
of life. 


GOING FISHING 83 


MAN BUILT FOR PLAY AS WELL AS FOR WORK 


What is all this but saying that God has built us 
to play as well as to work? He Who made the 
tear ducts also made the laughing muscles. He 
Who builds within the soul the mood for medita- 
tion also builds there the sense of humour. It is as 
important to gratify one as the other. I pity the 
man who never prays, but I also pity him who 
never plays. He probably would pray better if he 
played some. 

This is not to say that play is the whole program 
of life. It is merely one number. People who 
devote themselves entirely to pleasure shrivel. 
They cannot grow. They are of little value to the 
world. People who are forever asking to be en- 
tertained have child minds. They never grow up. 
But the man who never plays gets little fun out of 
life. He makes life a poky business for others, 
and grows old out of time. 

Of course recreation should deserve its name. 
It should recreate. The play that leaves a stain is 
a calamity. Pleasure that is a form of dissipation 
is a curse. People who get their fun out of foul 
stories and dirty shows and dishonest amuse- 
ments mistake excitement for recreation, confound 
amusement with enjoyment. 

When recreation re-creates, it not only does 
for us what has been suggested as the result 
of a day with the rod and the stream,—it not 
only cures care and stimulates the imagination 


84: GOD’S OPEN 


and makes us more human, but there are big- 
ger and better things it does. It calls us back 
to simplicity and sincerity. We so often allow 
conventionalism to enslave us. We go down 
on our knees before appearances. Life grows 
insincere. It is veneered. ‘There is need to 
tear off the veil and snap the fetters and be 
free. Amid the relaxations of clean sport, this 
takes place. 

It also cleanses life. It makes people purer to 
get away from the grind. All of us are “slightly 
soiled,” and the stream that cleanses must be a 
living stream. Purity is not the product of a 
monk’s cell. Holiness does not thrive in seclusion. 
It needs the open. Goods kept on the shelves be- 
come shop-worn. Life is cheapened and tarnished 
in the same way. It is cleansed and renewed in 
God’s great out-of-doors. 

It also contributes to faith. He is wisest who 
finds his fun in contact with nature, who thinks 
God’s thoughts after Him, who communes with 
God in the forest and by the stream. From such 
communion he returns with stronger faith both in 
God and in man. “The heavens declare the glory 
of God, and the firmament showeth his handi- 
work.” Nature speaks of its Maker. You cannot 
listen to the fields and streams and flowers very 
long without learning that there is a God, and 
that “ He is the rewarder of them who diligently 
seek him.” 


GOING FISHING 85 


FISHING FOR MEN 

There is a higher form of recreation than any 
thus far mentioned. Christ calls it fishing, too. 
Was it an accident that so many of the apostles 
were fishermen? There were plenty of shepherds 
and tradesmen in that land, but Andrew and Peter, 
James and John, the big four, were all fishermen. 
Was it merely a trick of metaphor when Jesus 
stopped by the sea and called to the men in the 
boat: ‘‘ Come ye after me, and I will make you to 
become fishers of men”? Did He not mean that 
the greatest game of all is life, and that the great- 
est fun in life is still just fishing, but fishing 
for men? 

As those Galilean fishermen listened, how life 
widened out, how the sky pushed back! ‘Theirs 
had been a small program. ‘Their little world 
ended there on the beach. They had not thought 
beyond their boats and nets. But now the Son of 
man is calling them to be “ fishers of men,” and all 
at once they discover what life is for. ‘They see 
their chance to shape history, to build a kingdom. 
Again they seem to hear Peter saying: “I go 
a-fishing,” and in a newer and higher sense they 
say, as they leave all and follow Jesus: “ We also 
go with thee!” 

This is the great recreation. If one would know 
what real joy is, let him go out and try to save a 
man. If he would have his imagination sublimely 
kindled, let him seek souls. When he is cast down 


86 GOD'S OPEN 


and lonely, when sorrow and disappointment are 
his portion, when he is like that little group long 
ago who had lost the Lord, here is the remedy. Go 
fishing. But let it be also for men. ‘Take a hand 
at world-building. Push back the sky-line. Get a 
glimpse of far hofizons. The opportunity is 
for all. 

I am sorry for him who has never gone fishing 
for men, who has never cast a line for a human 
soul, who has never angled to catch immortals, who 
has never tasted the supreme joy of leading others 
into fellowship with Jesus. There is an ecstacy 
about it that is sublime. It is the great adventure 
which all may follow, for it is open season every 
day in God’s world for those who fish for men! 


VII 


THE CROOKED TREE THAT 
STRAIGHTENED 


THE TREE " 


I love thee when thy swelling buds appear, 
And one by one their tender leaves unfold, 
As if they knew that warmer suns were near, 
Nor longer sought to hide from winter’s cold; 
And when with darker growth thy leaves are seen 
To veil from view the early robin’s nest, 
I love to lie beneath thy waving screen, 

With limbs by summer’s heat and toil oppressed; 
And when the autumn winds have stripped thee bare, 
And round thee lies the smooth, untrodden snow, 

When naught is thine that made thee once so fair, 
I love to watch thy shadowy form below, 
And through thy leafless arms to look above 
On stars that brighter beam when most we need 
their love. 
—JONES VERY. 


Vil 


THE CROOKED TREE THAT 
STRAIGHTENED 


“Immediately she was made strong and glorified 
God,”—LUKE 13: 13. 


€): summer day while strolling across the 


lovely campus of Ursinus College, I came 
upon the crooked tree that straightened. 
It was a big tree, its trunk measuring some twenty 
inches in diameter, its tall branches lifting on a 
level with the high roofs of the nearby buildings. 
Around it on the campus were other great trees of 
various kinds,—firs and oaks and elms, maples and 
tulips and gums, and here and there an apple tree 
with the red fruit glinting through the green leaves. 
All these trees had grown straight from sod to sky, 
save the tree before which I stopped. It had grown 
crooked. It had grown from the root on an angle 
to the earth’s surface for a distance of some fifteen 
feet up its trunk. Then in a sharp line it had 
abruptly righted itself to the pefipendicular, and 
from there on, had grown straight toward the 
heavens. f 
THE CROOKED TREE 
The tree interested me. It had started wrong. 
It had started crooked. It was not the way God 
89 


90 GOD’S OPEN 


wants trees to grow. God wants trees to grow 
straight. Something had happened. What was it? 
Some law of nature had been violated. Some hurt 
had been inflicted on the tree when it was a mere 
sapling. What was responsible for that bent trunk 
standing there on the college campus amid the 
straight and graceful trees which surrounded it? 
I brought some men from the conference to see the 
tree and diagnose the situation. One said that the 
trouble was caused by some external weight or 
force when the tree was young. Another thought 
it had started in an environment too crowded. An- 
other surmised that there had been a lack of light, 
and the tree had grown crooked reaching for sun- 
shine. But all agreed that it was a curious sight. 
It was not the way God and nature intend trees to 
develop. 

But the tree had straightened. It had gotten 
into line. It had declined to stay crooked. You 
could see exactly where the fight took place and 
where the battle was won. The bent place was not 
a curve, but an angle. That was the feature which 
captured our keenest interest. In a definite engage- 
ment the tree had fought off its foes. It had flung 
aside its handicap and risen above its wounds. 
Then, by the laws which God has ordained for 
trees, by the invisible processes of life that go on 
inside the tree, it had not been bent but had grown 
straight. 

It was good to see. I felt like taking off my hat 


CROOKED TREE STRAIGHTENED 91 


to that tree. I was proud of it. A straight life 
had come to others as an-inheritance, but this tree 
had to fight for its integrity. Other trees had be- 
haved from their infancy, but this one had gone 
wrong and come back. As I looked at it, I thought 
of the promise: “To him that overcometh,” and 
wondered whether a tree that fights for its char- 
acter and wins does not deserve a crown. As I 
looked at the crooked tree that straightened, I 
thought I understood better what Jesus meant when 
He said that there was more joy over finding one 
lost sheep than over ninety-nine that had never gone 
astray. 


THE CROOKED BODY 


There are human bodies like that tree. It is such 
a body that limps out on the stage in the story told 
in the thirteenth chapter of Luke. There was a 
woman bent over and bowed toward the earth. 
She was unable to walk erect. She was unable to 
hold up her head and look about her with the free- 
dom and comfort and grace possessed by her fel- 
lows. For eighteen years she had been chained to 
this infirmity. For more than one-third of the 
average life-time, she had dragged her crooked 
body along the earth, no doubt envying the people 
who could hold up their heads, and wondering why 
such a handicap had been laid on her. 

There are others like her. ‘There are more 
crooked bodies than there are crooked trees. You 


92 GOD’S OPEN 


can hardly walk the streets on any day without 
seeing some human body with an infirmity, lamed 
or maimed or blemished. It is not God’s will. 
God means human bodies as well as trees to grow 
straight. He means for life to come into posses- 
sion of a body free from the taint of inherited dis- 
ease into an environment where there is plenty of 
light and air and nourishment. Do not blame the 
Maker for these deformities which greet the eye. 
The human body as it came from His hands was 
the most perfect machine ever made. It was mar- 
velous, and many of our most wonderful inven- 
tions are copied from the human body. 

Why, then, are these bodies bent and bowed, 
twisted and deformed and diseased? It is the re- 
sult of the violation of law. Somewhere along the 
line, either in the individual or in his forebears, 
either from himself or his surroundings, a wrong 
has been done, a hurt inflicted, which was contrary 
to God’s will. “ Visiting the iniquities of the 
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth 
generation” is part of an inescapable law. ‘The 
physical penalty for sin is terrific. Recently I was 
called to visit two men in an insane asylum. In 
talking to the superintendent about them, he said 
they had paresis and their condition was hopeless. 
Syphilis was slowly eating its way up the spinal 


_ column into the tissues of the brain. He declared 
that eight cases of insanity out of every ten were 


caused in this way. What a horrible harvest men 


CROOKED TREE STRAIGHTENED 93 


reap in their own bodies for the sins they commit! 

Look again at the woman in the Bible story. 
Her crooked body is straight now. She is bowed 
to the earth no longer. She is standing erect. She 
can look you in the face. Her infirmity is gone 
from her forever. Jesus has worked the trans- 
formation. It was His eye that saw the poor 
creature and pitied her. Others had seen her, and 
had gossiped about her bent body, or ignored it. 
But Christ saw and pitied. This is the way He 
feels about crooked bodies. It was His voice that 
called her. It was His hand that touched her and 
thrilled her as He said: “ Woman, be loosed from 
thine infirmity!” “And immediately she was 
made straight and glorified God.” 

It is a glorious sight to see a crooked body 
straighten. How is the miracle performed? It is 
not by ignoring the laws of nature, nor by declin- 
ing the use of means. Of course there is divine 
healing, but you need not search for it among 
quacks and charlatans. God never works a mir- 
acle unnecessarily. He does not discredit the 
natural with the supernatural. Medicine and surg- 
ery and sanitation are as divine as prayer. What 
folly to substitute a crotchet for a law! Back of 
all the processes of life and growth is God. 


“A fire mist and a planet, 
A crystal and a cell, 
A jellyfish and a saurian, 
And a cave where the cave men dwell; 


94: GOD’S OPEN 


Then a sense of law and beauty, 
And a face turned from the clod; 
Some call it evolution, 
And others call it God.” 


What a glorious thing to straighten a crooked 
body, to heal a club-footed child, to wipe a harelip 
from a baby’s face, to mend a tubercular bone, to 
rebuild a deformed hip! Thank God for hospitals! 
Hats off to doctors and surgeons and nurses! 
They are all a part of the good God’s ministry to 
the hurt life of the world. Whether they recognize 
it or not, they are widening out the work of Him 
Who long ago said: “ Woman, be loosed from 
thine infirmity! ” 

But there is something worse than a crooked 
tree, worse even than a crooked body. 


THE CROOKED SOUL 


There are crooked souls. It is not God’s will 
that souls any more than trees or human bodies 
should grow crooked. God wants the soul to grow 
straight. Omnipotence releases itself for this mis- 
sion. God’s grace is at work. Divine activities are 
engaged. Love is enlisted to drive back the forces 
which assail the spirit. God hates sin because sin 
makes souls crooked. God is in the business of 
salvation. His plan for man’s spiritual nature is 
that it grow straight from sod to sky, from time 
to eternity. 

But the world is full of crooked souls,— 


CROOKED TREE STRAIGHTENED~ 95 


twisted, deformed, lamed. ‘They are unable to 
stand straight and face life without fear. Some- 
times these deformities are concealed. Nobody 
wants to flaunt his moral and spiritual crookedness 
in the face of the world. He wants a reputation 
for rectitude and decency whether he deserves it or 
not. It is strange that with such a desire to seem 
straight, we should not make greater effort to be 
straight. 

It is sin that makes a crooked soul. And sin is 
man’s product. It is surrender to the lower and 
baser and animal side of our natures. Of course 
bad surroundings, foul air, sordid poverty, vicious 
associations, all aggravate the situation; but the 
real hurt is self-inflicted, for sin cannot enter until 
the human will gives its consent. 

This is the saddest sight to be seen on earth,— 
not a crooked tree, not a deformed body, but a 
diseased and rotting moral nature. Have you gone 
through a home for incurables? Have you visited 
a hospital for crippled children? You came away 
sad of face and heavy of heart. Anyone who can 
look on such sights and not be moved to pity is 
made of stone. But there is a sadder sight to 
anguish the heart. It is diseased and crippled 
souls. It is a moral sense twisted and bent. It is 
a spirit blind and deaf, past feeling. This is life’s 
most tragic deformity. 

A crooked soul may be straightened. Such is 
the glad news of the gospel. Its message is not 


96 GOD’S OPEN 


for trees, not so much even for the body, but for 
the immortal soul. This is the glorious work of 
salvation. No soul is so deformed as to baffle the 
technique of the Divine Surgeon, no hurt so deep 
but the skill of the Great Physician can reach and 
heal it. ‘There never was a case too hard for Him. 
To bent and bowed souls, to lives enslaved to appe- 
tites, tormented by lust, stained by vice and wrong- 
doing, crushed by penalty, Jesus says: “ Be loosed 
from your infirmities!” 

It is a glorious sight to see a crooked soul 
straighten! ‘This is the battle royal. ‘There is the 
fight in which all heaven is interested. If faith 
will listen, 1t can hear cheers from the skies for the 
soul that declines to be satisfied with a crooked life. 
There is joy among the angels over one sinner that 
repenteth. Of course God’s plan is for life never 
to go wrong. When children are trained in the 
right way, they never know an hour without trust 
in their Heavenly Father. Salvation is not sal- 
vage. It is prevention and production and growth. 
Nevertheless, when life goes wrong, when the son 
wanders into the far country, when all left for 
grace is to pluck the soul like a brand from the 
burning, such redemption and recovery produce a 
double joy. 

Have you been saved? If so, rejoice. If not, 
decline to despair. ‘The tree on the campus of 
Ursinus College is a picture of a man converted 
late in life, of one who has gone crooked for 


CROOKED TREE STRAIGHTENED 97 


twenty or forty years, and then straightened. 
There is, however, a point where the change must 
take place, and salvation takes place, not on a 
curve, but at an angle. There must be decision. 
People do not drift into heaven. ‘ Turn ye, turn 
ye, for why will ye die?”’ It is a great hour when 
a soul lifts its face toward heaven, when it dis- 
covers that Christ is calling, and that He would do 
for the soul what was done for the crooked tree 
on the college campus, for the bent body of a poor 


woman that Sabbath day long ago! 


im 


¥ 


i) it 





Vill 


A MAN AND THE WILDERNESS 


THE TOIL OF THE TRAIL 


What have I gained by the toil of the trail? 
I know and know well. 

I have found once again the lore I had lost 
In the loud city’s hell. 


I have broadened my hand to the cinch and the axe, 
I have laid my flesh to the rain; 

I was hunter and trailer and guide; 
I have touched the most primitive wildness again. 


I have threaded the wild with the stealth of the deer, 
No eagle is freer than I; 

No mountain can thwart me, no torrent appall, 
I defy the stern sky. 

So long as I live these joys will remain, 

I have touched the most primitive wildness again. 


—HAMLIN GARLAND, 


VIII 
A MAN AND THE WILDERNESS 


“What went ye out inio the wilderness to see?” 
—MAatTIrHEw II: 7. 


T is the wilderness, a region wild and thinly 
I populated. There are no cities, and no roads 
to speak of. It is nature in primeval sim- 
plicity. There is sunshine and clean air, and some 
flowers bloom, and there is sand,—plenty of sand. 
But you will find no marble palaces, no tailor-made 
parks, no libraries and works of art, no stately 
temples and busy shops. Jesus asks: ‘“ What went 
ye out into the wilderness to see?”” ‘The wilder- 
ness looks uninviting. 

Here is civilization. Here are cities and shrines, 
gorgeous palaces and a gold-plated temple. Here 
are arms and fortresses, and noisy trade, and the 
splendour and glamour of human achievement. 
Here, too, in the city, is the scramble for place, the 
fight for power, and the quest for wealth. Here 
you will find pride, and pomp, and hypocrisy, and 
injustice, and oppression, and want, and restless- 
ness, and despair. All this you will find where 
people swarm and grow civilized. 

The spectacle is that of the crowds leaving the 

101 


102 GOD’S OPEN 


city for the wilderness, leaving civilization for 
nature, turning their backs on ivory palaces and 
gorgeous shrines, deserting the stalls and shops and 
money-bags, and pouring into the wilderness. 
Great crowds are doing this. Every town seems 
to have emptied itself. The roads are thronged 
with pilgrims. There are all kinds of people,—not 
only peasants and traders, but yonder are some 
priests going where there is no temple, and there 
are some soldiers going where there is not even a 
place for dress parade. The king with his splendid 
retinues has joined the crowd and is making for 
the desert. Something must be going on. What 
is the sight? ‘There has been no advertising. No 
megaphone has cried the show. Yet something 
extraordinary is on exhibition, for the world is 
making for the wilderness. 

This is the remarkable occurrence to which Jesus 
refers. He is speaking of the exodus of city folks 
to the desert, of the great hegira when Jerusalem 
and the towns around poured their population into 
the wilderness. What was the attraction? What 
were the people after? ‘‘ What went ye out into 
the wilderness to see?”’? We shall discover; but 
before doing so, notice the trend. 


BACK TO THE WILDERNESS 
There are times when we go back to the wilder- 
ness for help. The people in Jerusalem had found 
that pomp and power and place and wealth, and all 


A MAN AND THE WILDERNESS 103 


the things which go with them, were a failure. 
Government was corrupt, society rotten, and the 
rites of religion had degenerated into an empty 
form. Sham and cant, hypocrisy and injustice and 
oppression, had captured the seats of authority. 
‘There was not much chance for a poor man, and 
next to none for an honest man. People were sus- 
picious and jealous, restless and unhappy. Life 
had lost the note of sincerity. Existence was a 
vain show, a pantomime, a tragedy, a despair. 

Civilization is greatly overrated. We brag about 
it, and pile up statistics. We build big houses and 
big ships and big cities. We invent, discover, 
project. We nurse our whims, and gratify our 
stale souls, with every new thrill that is on the 
market. Then some day, when a sane mood 
catches us, we look the situation over and say: 
*“What’s the use!” Is this all there is in life,— 
the passion for pleasure, the struggle for place, the 
fight for power, and the quest for gain? Soon we 
die, and all is gone. We are like children, building 
block houses just for the fun of knocking them 
down. This is about all there is in the kind of life 
some people live. Now and then the winds which 
blow from heaven tear a hole in the clouds, and we 
see past delusions to reality. 

Then we are ready for the desert. ‘Then comes 
over us a hatred of sham, and a sigh for sincerity 
and simplicity. We would like to get away from 
the pantomime, shake off our bejeweled harness, 


104 GOD’S OPEN 


turn our backs on vanity, on paint and powder and 
gold lace and frills and millinery, on the silly show 
and childish ambitions, and once more have fel- 
lowship with downright, unaffected, unpretentious 
honesty. It is the call of the wilderness. It is a 
soul sighing for the chance to live. What has the 
wilderness to offer? 


A MAN 

The sight in the wilderness is a man,—an honest 
man, a simple, fearless, unterrified, incorruptible, 
unpurchasable man. It is a great sight,—shall we 
say arare sight? The crowd found a man beyond 
the Jordan. That was all. There were no new 
laws, no fresh tricks and paraphernalia, no new 
organizations and institutions, no novel experi- 
ments in government, no theologies nor sociologies, 
no reforms for the army, no new avenues for com- 
merce,—nothing but just a man. 

This is all that God has to offer a world that has 
grown anemic, a civilization that has become 
effete. He says: “I will give you a man.” This 
has ever been His plan. The new age has always 
had a man on the horizon. When a nation was to 
be created, there was Abraham; emancipated, there 
was Moses; given a country, there was Joshua; 
developed into a world-power, there was David; 
when a race was to be saved, there was Jesus of 
Nazareth. The same plan shows in profane his- 
tory. Every great reformation has had a man at 


A MAN AND THE WILDERNESS 105 


the front. And so you may write history with a 
roll call. Methods and tools and institutions shift 
about. It is the will, the soul of a man that makes 
the age. 

And all this is as true to-day as ever. While we 
are in the age of tools and machinery, the man is 
still on top. When things get chaotic, when civili- 
zation fades and becomes pallid, when greed and 
graft and corruption abound, when pomp and place 
and power over-reach and betray, and when society 
sickens and cries for help, the remedy will come, 
not in some new act of legislation, some fresh out- 
let for trade; it will come as it has always come, in 
a man great enough and good enough to call his 
fellows back to that which is simple, honest, and 
sincere. 


A WILDERNESS PRODUCT 


The man who saves the day and makes the age 
has often been a wilderness product. The man 
who conquers and overthrows a régime that has 
fattened on corruption, and grown insolent and in- 
iquitous, has usually been a dweller close to nature. 
He has always been something of an elemental 
man, a dweller in God’s open. This was the show 
feature in John the Baptist. There was nothing 
like him in town. He did not have his price. 
Probably some of the city folks laughed at him at 
first, and said: “ Look at his clothes!) They don’t 
fit. There is no style about him. He wears 


106 GOD’S OPEN 


camel’s hair.” But as they listened to him, as they 
came under the spell of his fearless soul, they said: 
“Here is a man who can be trusted. Give him the 
right of way.”’ 

A little reflection will show that most of the 
world leaders of virility and power have lived close 
to nature. The winds of the wilderness have blown 
across their souls. In a fine passage in “‘ The 
Valour of Ignorance,” Homer Lea calls attention 
to the fact that it has nearly always been a man 
of this kind who has led a world conquest. 
God got Livingston out of a cotton mill, and 
Lincoln out of a log cabin. When the man for 
the age has been gently bred, he has had a spirit 
great enough to resist the soft and enervating 
influences of luxury and wealth, and be an ele- 
mental man. 

He who leads his age in the battle against the 
forces which debauch and corrupt and prey upon 
society must be strong enough to resist these forces 
himself. Such an one is hard to find. How often 
has the man the people trusted turned out to be the 
man their foes have captured! At the critical 
moment, he wobbled and went over to the enemy. 
The bribe was bigger than his soul could resist. I 
do not believe that every man has his price, but I 
fear several have. And so, again and again, a 
great cause has been humiliated by defeat, not be- 
cause it was unrighteous, but because its leadership 
was apostate. 


A MAN AND THE WILDERNESS 107 


THE PORTRAIT OF THE MAN FROM THE 
WILDERNESS 

What kind of a man did the desert have to offer? 
What were the measures of this man in camel’s 
hair tunic? Can he stand the lure of the crowd? 
Will popularity turn his head? Will the call to the 
city tame his message? Will the chance for ease 
swamp him? Look him over and note his marks. 
Christ sketches the portrait. 

He has convictions. He is not a reed. He 
stands like stiff steel. This is the first quality of 
a great leader. He must stand, whether the crowd 
be with him or not. How often have we gone out 
to see a man, and found a reed,—a thin, vapid, 
spindle-legged, wobbling effigy of a man, swaying 
this way and that, a wily politician, trying to 
please everybody, promising much and fulfilling 
nothing! 

He has character. He is not clothed in soft rai- 
ment. ‘The fine thing is not what he has on, but 
what he is,—not his clothes, but his character. 
«You cannot make a man out of a clothes-line, a 
uniform, regalia, epaulets. 

He has a message. He is a prophet. John’s 
message was straight, simple, honest. Everybody 
understood it. If the crowds did not like the mes- 
sage, they might go. The man who helps the age 
must lose himself in his cause. How often have 
we come out to hear a prophet, and found an office- 
seeker, a poor little partisan politician, and gone 


108 GOD’S OPEN 


back to the graft-cursed city, saying: “ Fooled 
again!” 

The man from the wilderness has more than all 
this. Jesus said he was greater than a prophet. 
There was something in the man we cannot frame 
nor put into words. ‘It was the divine part of him. 
So with every real leader who stands out against 
evil, and resists lawlessness and corruption. After 
all has been said, something remains unsaid. He 
is too fine for phrases. Such was the man who 
drew the crowds to the desert, and ushered in the 
Messiah. He called his times back to simplicity, to 
reality, to purity, to righteousness. 


THE MAN THE WORLD NEEDS 

What a great thing if the city could have a few 
men from the wilderness for leaders! Amid the 
strife of factions, the clash of interests, the play of 
partisan politics, and all the evils incident to such 
disorder and misrule, there is needed some honest, 
sincere, courageous leadership,—a man big enough 
and strong enough and white enough to rally to 
him all the forces of righteousness. ‘There are 
plenty of men who feel they can fill the bill,—who, 
when the call sounds, answer: ‘‘ Here am I!” but 
there is no evidence of any hegira in their direction. 

Every town and state needs a few men of the 
John the Baptist type. It goes without the saying 
that a real leader must have brains and morals. 
John the Baptist was no fool, The trouble often 


A MAN AND THE WILDERNESS _ 109 


with the self-elected reformer is that he is short- 
statured intellectually. He is a fanatic. He sees 
only one issue, and that from a narrow angle. On 
the other hand, there is no man more dangerous to 
the best interests of the state than one who has 
both brains and morals, but who lends these to the 
forces of corruption. The leader needed must 
have convictions, character, and a message, and 
then something more. He must have that thing 
which you cannot put into words. He must be a 
man of faith, and tie up to the Source of strength. 
There is no hope of any man leading to something 
better who 1s not himself divinely led. 

There is need of a leader who, like John the Bap- 
tist, is willing to decrease, to efface his own per- 
sonal interests, who is not out for office, who cares 
little about his personal fortunes, whose ambition 
‘is to open a way, and who, if the cause demands, is 
willing, like John the Baptist, to lose his head in 
the adventure. 

What chance is there for such men to be raised 
up in this greatly troubled day? We must not lose 
hope. ‘The wilderness has not gone out of busi- 
ness! In some humble home a boy may be in 
training to save the city. On some farm a youth 
may be growing to manhood who will some day 
‘rally the forces of righteousness. Somewhere 
,among us, even now, may dwell the leader of 
honest heart and simple ways and fearless soul who 
will prepare the way. Indeed, the chance to be 


110 GOD’S OPEN 


such a leader is offered to every man who is willing 
to pay the price. Christ lifted John to a pinnacle, 
and then said to the men who were listening: “ You 
may surpass him!” He that is least in the king- 
dom of heaven is greater. That is your oppor- 
tunity and mine. God has not quit making ele- 
mental men. He still has power to; but His shop 
is often in the wilderness, 


IX 
FADING LEAVES 


UNDER THE LEAVES 


Oft have I walked these woodland paths 
Without the blessed foreknowing 

That underneath the withered leaves 
The fairest buds were growing. 


To-day the south wind sweeps away 
The types of autumn’s splendour, 

And shows the sweet arbutus flowers,— 
Spring’s children, pure and tender. 


O prophet-flowers !—with lips of bloom, 
Outvying in your beauty 

The pearly tints of ocean shells,— 
Ye teach me faith and duty! 


Walk life’s dark ways, ye seem to say, 
With love’s divine foreknowing 

That where man sees but withered leaves, 
God sees sweet flowers growing. 


—ALBERT LEIGHTON, 


1X 
FADING LEAVES 


“We all do fade as a leaf.”—Isatau 64:6. 


SAIAH stands amid the falling and fading 

leaves of autumn. He is thinking of his 

nation. It seems to him that its glory has 
departed. His people have lost their virility. 
They have grown dull and irresponsive and emo- 
tionless. ‘Their righteousness is like a polluted 
garment, and their iniquities are like winds that 
would blow them away from God. 

Depressed and melancholy, he has sought out 
some lonely spot on a mountain crag or in a 
wooded glen where in solitude he may brood over 
the vanished glory and present decline of his 
nation. Looking about him, his eyes rest on the 
fading forests. The green of spring has faded 
from the leaves, and brown and sere they are 
falling from the branches and drifting in the 
autumn wind. They seem to him to be a picture 
of his country. “ We all do fade as a leaf.” 

And so this line seems to voice despair. It is the 
utterance of one who is dwelling on the dark side 
of life, and who is correspondingly depressed. The 
fading leaf is a symbol of a glory that is gone. It 

113 


114 GOD’S OPEN 


recites defeat and decay. Its message is in a 
minor chord. 


THE PATHOS OF AUTUMN 


Fading leaves tell the story of life. They speak 
of our bodies. The body wears out. Old age 
draws on apace. 


“Change and decay in all around I see.” 


Yonder is an athlete full of vigour and strength. 
The blood fairly dances in his veins. His muscles 
are as supple and elastic as steel. Every organ is 
sound, and every physical faculty functions at the 
maximum of efficiency. Nothing wearies him. 
He carries no burdens. He has no fears. It is 
glorious just to be alive. Great is youth! 

Then the years slip by. The blood slows down 
and cools off. The muscles stiffen and the joints 
creak on their hinges. The heart is less steady and 
the brain less clear. The step is slow and the back 
is bent. ‘The hand is tremulous and the vision dim. 
It is the old story. “Or ever the silver cord be 
loosed or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher 
be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at 
the cistern.” 

Our bodies wear out. The house in which we 
dwell tumbles down. ‘The fountain of perpetual 
youth remains undiscovered. ‘The physicians con- 
tinue their fight against disease, and their struggle 
to promote health, but at last the hour comes when 


FADING LEAVES 115 


the doctor says: “I can do no more.” ‘The shut- 
ters are drawn, and we walk softly, for death is at 
the door. Soon it will be “‘ earth to earth, ashes to 
ashes, dust to dust.” The body was not built for 
a long lease. It can have but one tenant, for “ we 
all do fade as a leaf.” 

Fading leaves tell the story of human experience, 
of our joys and hopes and expectations. They are 
the melancholy recital of one whose page of life is 
torn, whose cup passes from sweet to bitter, whose 
day changes from gold to gray, and whose road 
winds from the green valleys and the sunny 
heights off into gloomy shadowed canyons. 

There a youth steps to his work in the glory of a 
great promise. ‘Talented and trained, with abun- 
dant opportunities, he needs but to put himself to 
the test and all will be well. Those who love him 
watch his course with confident pride. ‘‘ The 
year’s at the spring.” ‘Too soon, however, autumn 
comes. His will breaks down before temptation. 
There is a lack of application, an unwillingness to 
pay the rugged price success demands. He is turn- 
ing from hard and homely tasks to follow lines of 
least resistance, and the promise of the morning 
fades and fails. 

Yonder is a man who measures himself against 
the world in the competitions of business life. He 
feels that he can do what others have done. He 
has the nerve and energy and enterprise needed to 
launch great undertakings, He possesses initiative. 


116 GOD’S OPEN 


Success seers coming down the road to meet him. 
If the markets will stay steady, in a year or two he 
will reach the hill-crest, and the remainder of life’s 
road will be easy. But at the crisis, the weather 
changes. The markets go to smash. Something 
takes place against’ which there is no insurance. 
He is caught between the upper and the nether 
millstones. His securities are sacrificed, and all 
that is left of his splendid business venture is a 
chastened experience. 

Here is another chapter. This time it is a story 
of misplaced confidence. It is a young lawyer or 
doctor or preacher or business man, brimming with 
enthusiasm, believing in human nature, saying that 
it is a good world, and that people are better than 
they seem. But soon this sunny-souled optimist 
runs into a fog. He suffers disillusionment. The 
tiger gets its claws in him. MHis best friend 
betrays him. He finds that society is artificial, 
that men are given to deceit and duplicity. His 
optimism dies. He becomes cynical, sarcastic, 
censorious, pessimistic. It is just the story of 
the fading leaf writing itself across another 
human life. 

Then there is the gladdest and holiest hour of 
all, the wedding morning. A man and a maid 
plight their troth. Eden swings wide its gates of 
joy to them. Was there ever such a spring? The 
song that is singing in their hearts is of a happiness 
that will last until the sunset. But sometimes,—not 


FADING LEAVES 17 


always, thank God! Would it were never !—but 
sometimes marriage joy fades as the leaf. Before 
the day has passed to noon the sky is full of clouds, 
and the glory of a great hope is dead. 

Thus one might pass from chapter to chapter 
through the entire volume of human experience, 
and find the fading leaf on well-nigh every page. 
The same drift is discovered in great world move- 
ments. The fading leaves symbolize nations that 
have risen and flourished and fallen, civilizations 
that have come and gone, empires whose torch has 
lit the world and then flickered in its socket and 
died. One may call the roll of the dead nations of 
the world and dwell on the splendour of their 
achievements, but the only trace of their remains 
is that turned up by the spade of the archzolo- 
gist. Nations, like people, fall into the sere and 
yellow leaf. 

How this mournful line from the lips of Isaiah 
seems to echo over the earth to-day! It recites the 
pathos of the modern world. ‘There are lovely 
cities in ruins, prosperous countries wrecked, na- 
tions dying, nations in exile, communities broken 
up. It is the horror of the world’s worst war. 
The ethical restraints wrought out in a thousand 
years of patient human struggle have been dis- 
credited and rejected. It is a fading page of world 
glory in human history. 

Amid the ruin, America seems secure. But for 
how long? When will the beauty of springtime 


118 GOD’S OPEN 


turn to the brown and sere of autumn for us? Is 
there coming a day when we shall be rudely 
wakened from our fancied security and dollar- 
chasing activities to find that the tide of horror 
which engulfed Europe is rolling in on us? We 
shall need more than a policy of avoiding entang- 
ling alliances to escape the perils of that tide. We 
must safeguard the future with righteousness, with 
a Christian treatment of other nations, and with 
the use of our vast resources for world welfare. 
No man can live by himself. Neither can any 
nation. 

And so autumn, whether of nature or of life, is 
suffused with pathos. Our moods take on a melan- 
choly tint with the falling of the leaves. Nature is 
reminding us of what is behind, of the gaiety that 
is gone, of the freshness that has faded, of the 
vigour that is spent, of the splendour that is de- 
clining, of the day that will soon be dead. 


“Autumn is over the long leaves that love us, 
And over the mice in the barley sheaves; 
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us, 
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves. 


“The hour of the waning of love has beset us, 
And weary and worn are our sad souls now; 
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us, 
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.” * 


As one dwells on all this, it is easy for him to 


* W. B. Yeats. 


FADING LEAVES 119 


lose his head, and grow melancholy and depressed, 
as did Isaiah. We need to look on the pathos of 
life until we shall see beyond it, on the fading 
leaves until we shall discover returning spring. 
We need to study life and nature, not with our 
senses but with our souls. Then we shall find in 
the falling, fading leaves of autumn not the creed 
of pessimism, but the secret of a deep and abiding 
optimism. 


AUTUMNAL GLORY 


There is an autumnal as well as a vernal glory. 
What is more beautiful than a tree in autumn 
dress, than a forest aflame with colour, as the frost 
paints his tints of red fire and yellow gold into the 
landscape? ‘There is pathos in the tree whose 
leaves wither in mid-summer before the time, but 
when nature does her work, the fading leaf is not 
an emblem of defeat but the season’s victorious 
banner flung out to say that the woods are ready 
for winter. 

Likewise the signs of advancing age in the 
human body are not distressing when they come in 
nature’s way. There is something lovely and satis- 
fying in the gracious repose and benediction of ripe 
old age. It is when one ages prematurely, paying 
the penalty for sin, when the vigour of youth 
withers through indiscreet indulgence, when long 
before the time the shoulders stoop and the step 
becomes unsteady, that age is melancholy. But 


120 GOD’S OPEN 


“the hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found 
in the way of righteousness.” ‘There is no melan- 
choly when winter is on the head but eternal sum- 
mer in the heart. Then the signs of advancing 
age are but an autumnal glory which life flings out 
to proclaim its readiness for death’s winter, when- 
ever that may come. 

It is as the leaves fade and fall that the fruit 
reaches its maturity. The other day I passed an 
apple orchard. The trees were all but leafless, but 
the branches were bending and groaning and well- 
nigh breaking under a big and bountiful crop of 
ripe red apples. The leaf had faded, but the fruit 
was in perfection. 

May it not be so with those experiences in 
life which strip us of foliage? The fruit is reach- 
ing perfection. Sometimes the great achievement 
comes just as the leaves fade and fall. Then the 
fruit is at its best. Just when life surrendered 
what seemed most precious, it reaches its sublime 
and most heroic experience. Gipsy Smith relates 
an experience he had in a shell hole on the French 
front. He found seven soldiers in the pit, all of 
them desperately wounded; and all but two later 
died. ‘They had been there for three days. He 
gave the first one his canteen, and the lad placed it 
to his parched lips, and then handed it to the soldier 
next. It went around the circle, and when it came 
back not a drop of water had left the flask! There 
was the falling, fading leaf of human valour in 


FADING LEAVES 121 


that shell hole, but there was glory there, too, that 
never dies. 

The leaves fade and fall, but the tree lives. 
None is so stupid as to imagine that the drifting 
foliage of autumn is a sign that the forest is dead. 
Neither should there be despair in God’s world of 
providence when the leaves fade. As we look 
across the battlefields of Europe, the splendour of 
civilization is dim, but God is on the throne. Let 
us be patient and nurse faith. It is the faith that - 
sees beyond the change of seasons that is needed 
now. It is power to sense the spiritual. What the 
world needs to-day is not a creed that withers like 
a leaf, but a conviction that has in it something of 
the fiber of the oak. Often chaos has been but an 
introduction to a new world order. Every night is 
the forerunner of dawn. And so the old prophetic 
shout stands: ‘‘ The morning cometh!” 

And the soul that senses autumnal glory is the 
soul that 


“ Sees in some dead leaf dried and curled 
The deeper meaning of the world, 
Hears in the roar of mortal things 
The God’s immortal whisperings.” 


Autumn fades into winter, but beyond the 
shroud of winter is returning spring. The leaf 
fades in order that the tree may survive a change 
of season unharmed. It is so with the death 
winter. The sermon in the fading leaves is a mes- 


122 GOD’S OPEN 


sage of immortality. ‘The body returns to the dust, 
but the spirit to God Who gave it. Death to the 
soul is but what the fading leaf is to the tree. 

One Sunday morning in the Highland Presby- 
terian Church, of Birmingham, Alabama, the pas- 
tor, Dr. J. Thompson Plunket, preached to his 
people a sermon from the text: “ We all do fade as 
a leaf.” As he finished his discourse, he fell, and 
in a few moments his work on earth was over. In 
a striking way he had himself fulfilled his message 
and gone on to nobler tasks. 

“arth breaks up, time fades away, 
Heaven flows in with its new day.” 

Thus the glory that is on the world in the fine 
days of autumn is a message of victory and hope. 
It speaks of the life that Christ imparts. He 
“came that we might have life and that we might 
have it more abundantly.” It speaks of the life that 
is fadeless. It reminds us of the country whose 
joys never wither and whose beauty never fades. 

Thus the soul looks beyond the forest flecked 
with red and brown and gold, longing for a land 
where beside the river of life there grows a tree 
whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and 
where the soul sings the song of a returning spring 
whose joy never withers. 

“Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
Thou madest man, he knows not why; 


He thinks he was not made to die; 
And Thou hast made him; Thou art just.” 


».« 
ANOTHER VILLAGE 


IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING 


In the cool of the evening, when the low sweet whispers 
waken, 
When the labourers turn them homeward, and the 
weary have their will, 
When the censers of the roses o’er the forest aisles are 
shaken, 
Is it but the wind that cometh o’er the far green hill? 


For they say ‘tis but the sunset winds that wander 
through the heather, 
Rustle all the meadow grass and bend the dewy fern; 
They say ’tis but the winds that bow the reeds in prayer 
together, 
And fill the shaken pools with fire along the shadowy 
burn. 


In the beauty of the twilight, in the Garden that He 
loveth, 
They have veiled His lovely vesture with the darkness 
of a name! 
Through His Garden, through His Garden, it is but the 
wind that moveth, 
No more! But O the miracle, the miracle is the same. 


In the cool of the evening, when the sky is an old story, 
Slowly dying, but remembered, ay, and loved with 
passion still. ... 
Hush! ... the fringes of His garment, in the fading 
golden glory 
Softly rustling as He cometh o’er the far green hill. 


—ALFRED NOYEs. 


Reprinted by permission from Collected Poems, Vol. I, by 
Alfred Noyes. Copyrighted 1913, by Frederick A. Stokes 
Company. 





Xx 
ANOTHER VILLAGE 


“And they went to another village.’—LuUKE 9: 56. 


ERE, is an incident in the earthly life of 
the Son of man, Who “ had not where to 
lay his head.’’ Jesus must have had many 

such experiences, and often spent the night with 
no roof above Him but the open sky. 


THE VILLAGE THAT SHUT CHRIST OUT 


The first thing to notice in this story is the 
village that turned Christ down. It was an ugly 
thing to do under any circumstances. It was de- 
cidedly ugly and unmannerly because of the cir- 
cumstances under which it was done. Jesus was 
on His way to Calvary. ‘And it came to pass 
when the time was come that he should be re- 
ceived up, he stedfastly set his face to go to 
Jerusalem.” Christ was on His way to lay down 
His life for the sins of the world, to make atone- 
ment, to make it possible for the lost to be saved, 
to slay hate, to reconcile man to God and men to 
each other, to tear down walls of sectionalism and 
suspicion and national jealousy, and make the 
world friendly. 


125 


126 GOD’S OPEN 


The cross was not easy for Christ. There was 
much to hold Him back. It required a struggle to 
goon. You can see the fight in His face, for “ he 
stedfastly set his face.’ He pushed ease and 
popularity aside, and made up His mind to go on 
to Calvary at any cost. This is the Guest Who is 
on the way, and this is His business. The Son of 
God is on the road to Calvary. The Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world is on the way to 
the supreme consummation. ‘The Redeemer of the 
race is on the last lap of the journey to His 
crucifixion. 

He must have lodging for the night, and He has 
sent some of His disciples ahead to make ready. 
Not much was required, just a shelter and a simple 
meal. There were no sumptuous hotels in that 
day and time where pampered guests might touch 
a button and have every wish gratified. The Sav- 
iour of the world had plain fare. But Christ was 
human enough to get tired and hungry. He 
needed rest and food. Therefore the disciples go 
ahead to make the few simple preparations that 
were necessary. 

The village they entered was a village of the 
Samaritans, and the Samaritans had no dealings 
with the Jews. Things, however, seemed to go 
smoothly at first. ‘The disciples did not ask for 
much. They were not fastidious. They were 
willing to put up with anything, and really there 
was no choice. They probably soon completed 


_— 


‘ANOTHER VILLAGE 127 


the few arrangements for Christ’s entertainment 
over night. 

And now Jesus has arrived. When the people 
of the village look Him over, they turn Him down. 
They say: “ You must get out. You cannot spend 
the night in this town. You must move on.” 
They treated Him as if He had been a common 
tramp. “Move on!” This is the slogan of mu- 
nicipal selfishness, of village isolation, and of in- 
human provincialism. That which made the surly 
boorishness of these inhospitable roughnecks es- 
pecially aggravating was the reason they gave for 
refusing to let Christ spend the night in their town. 

Jesus was conducting Himself in an orderly way. 
He had done nothing to give offense. He had 
broken no law. He was guilty of no trespass. The 
reason they assigned was that His face was set as 
if to go to Jerusalem. They were guilty of almost 
unbelievable narrowness and bigotry. The Sa- 
maritans would have nothing to do with Jesus 
because they themselves were not on friendly terms 
with Jerusalem. They insisted that the man who 
spent the night in their town should hate the people 
they hated. They demanded that anyone who 
would get food and shelter from them must absorb 
all their jealousies and become as bigoted as they 
were themselves. 

There are Christian people who seem to be af- 
flicted with the same spirit. The price they charge 
for their friendship is the adoption of their hatreds. 


128 GOD’S OPEN 


A pastor took charge of a church which was split 
into cliques. To be friendly with one side was to 
incur the enmity of the other. The fact that one 
of these factions had been especially active in pro- 
moting his call made it difficult for this preacher 
to get a square deal in the congregation. He finally 
moved on to a field less complex. The writer once 
sold an article describing a summer vacation to one 
of the religious weeklies of America. The article 
was published, and shortly after, he received a 
communication from one whose theological angle 
was out of harmony with that of the religious 
weekly. The communication took the writer se- 
verely to task for allowing anything to be published 
in such a sheet. This in the name of religion! 
Pity the world if this be religion! The Samaritans 
are not the only people to turn down Christ be- 
cause His face is set as though He would go to 
Jerusalem. 

The village lost Jesus. It turned Him out of 
doors. He went on His way rejected before ever 
He reached Pilate’s judgment hall or Calvary’s 
cross. ‘The village that rejected Him remained as 
mean and sordid and squalid, as dirty and dark, as 
full of hate and suspicion, as if the Lord of light 
and glory had never walked its streets. It might 
have had heaven, but it shut Christ out. 

It is strange what little things will lead to a re- 
jection of Christ. The King of glory comes our 
way. The Christ of Calvary, the Friend of sin- 


ANOTHER VILLAGE 129 


ners, the great-hearted Son of man comes to en- 
rich our lives, but there is someone in the church 
we do not like, some practice we disapprove, some 
tenet we decline to accept, some individual against 
whom we cherish an ancient grudge. Because of 
this, we turn down Christ. It is not fair. 

Thus the village lost its chance. It was not that 
Christ was unwilling and unable to do a big thing 
for the town. The woman at the well was a Sa- 
maritan. Christ changed her life, and through her, 
changed her town. He was ready to do as much 
for this village. Doubtless there were many sick 
people there longing to be healed. There were 
those weary with much waiting, carrying heavy 
burdens, with lives bare and lots hard. Christ was 
ready and able to change all this for them. But 
prejudice barred the door. The same thing goes 
on to-day. Sectarianism, sectionalism, race hatred, 
prejudices built on colour and class and caste, petty 
feuds, close the door against Christ. To rise above 
it all and claim and keep the heavenly Guest is the 
prayer we should make. 


THE FIRE EATERS 
Next in the story come the fire eaters. The dis- 
ciples were naturally indignant at the way their 
Master was treated. It was an outrage. Jesus had 
been insulted. They would not treat a dog the way 
this dirty little Samaritan village was treating their 
Master. Even a tired dog might rest on a door- 


130 GOD’S OPEN 


step or sleep under a shelter. It is not strange that 
the disciples resented the affront. We could not 
have much respect for them had they failed to be 
indignant. 

Two of them were worse than indignant. They 
were in a towering rage. They said: “ Lord, let 
us burn down the town. ‘This village should be 
wiped from the map. These people do not deserve 
to live. They have violated the simplest rules of 
common hospitality. They are a disgrace to the 
country. ‘They are a blot on the landscape.” 
“Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come 
down from heaven and consume them even as 
Elias did?” 

They did not want the Saviour to worry over 
the situation. They would not have Him lift His 
hand in the matter. They are ready to do all that 
is necessary. They seem to say: “‘ Leave these 
people to us. Only say the word, and the vile 
shacks of this inhospitable town will go up in 
smoke.” 

The identity of these fire eaters is somewhat 
surprising. [hey are James and John who are 
tugging at the tether, James the sedate, self-poised, 
judicial counselor, and John the gentle, sweet- 
spirited apostle of love, the man who wrote: “ Lit- 
tle children, love one another.” These are the men 
who would burn down the town and wipe this half 
acre of hell off the map. And yet it is not surpris- 
ing that these are the men, for there is nothing like 


ANOTHER VILLAGE 131 


the storm of a gentle soul once aroused, the wrath 
of love once enraged. They are, however, taking 
themselves rather seriously, for they seem to think 
they can do what they propose. They can com- 
mand fire from heaven. They are in charge of the 
elements. ‘They are in the same class with Elijah. 
They are able to work miracles. They only need 
Christ’s permission, and the thing will be done. 

Fire! Good people seem to have a partiality for 
this remedy. ‘There are those who like the doctrine 
of hell. It guarantees that the enemy will get his 
desserts. It is a comforting doctrine for those who 
are not going that way. Burnthem! Exterminate 
them! Excommunicate them! ‘They are not fit to 
live. Let them be Anathema! 

We come upon such saints in the Bible. James 
and John are not alone. David has said some 
rough things in the imprecatory Psalms. Paul has 
occasionally given way to the same mood. Are we 
to conclude that inspiration vouches for their con- 
duct as well as for the accuracy of the record? 
Must not even the sacred writers in the spirit they 
manifest be tested out by the Spirit of Christ? 
This does not mean that Christians are never to 
fight. We are to “contend earnestly for the faith 
once delivered to the saints.” Yet militant Chris- 
tianity may be easily overdone. It is significant 
that a canvass taken by one of the most widely cir- 
culated magazines in America to discover the ten 
best-loved hymns of Christendom resulted in a list 


res - 


132 GOD’S OPEN 


in which there was not one war hymn. Christ con- 
quers His enemies with love. Controversy never 
saved a soul. Dr. Hall, who wrote a lovely tract 
on ‘Come To Jesus,” became engaged in a bitter 
theological controversy, and wrote a severe denun- 
ciation of his antagonist. A friend suggested that 
Dr. Hall name this attack: “ Go To Hell,” by the 
author of “Come To Jesus.” It is not the fire 
eaters who build the kingdom. ‘“ Thy gentleness 
hath made me great.” 


ANOTHER VILLAGE 

“ And they went to another village.” ‘This was 
Christ’s answer to His disciples. He rebuked 
them. It was not an easy thing to do, for He must 
have loved them for their loyalty. They were 
ready to die for Him. He did not have so many 
of this kind. It was their undying devotion to 
Him that made them say what they said. Perhaps 
there was mixed in some of the Jews’ hatred of 
the Samaritans, but this was not the main thing. 
The main thing was their loyalty to Jesus. It must 
have stirred Christ to have followers true as steel. 

It took a broad mind and a clear head to rise 
above the situation, and insist that even under such 
provocation His disciples be fair and gentle. ‘They 
must not be unkind and unbrotherly even toward 
the people who had turned Him out of doors. His 
kingdom was not to be established by fire. And so 


Jesus “turned and rebuked them and said, Ye. 





ANOTHER VILLAGE 133 


know not what manner of spirit ye are of, for the 
Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but 
to save them.” 

His real answer, however, was not what He said, 
but what He did. He went to another village. He 
went somewhere else. ‘The village that turned Him 
down was not the only village. There were other 
towns. It was not necessary to burn down the 
town to get a place to rest. The world was not 
that crowded. He seemed to say: “ They do not 
want us here. Let us go where we are wanted.” 
Christ’s answer to the town that kicked Him out 
was not force nor argument nor reproach, nor even 
rebuke. Without a word, He turned and went 
away. He was still going to Jerusalem, to Calvary, 
to the cross, to a village that would open its doors 
and give Him rest and shelter and food. “ And He 
went to another village.” 

It was great. How Christ towers here! He 
rises above the little jealousies and revenges of 
earth. He scores selfishness and hate, and pleads 
for tolerance and love. Is it difficult to believe in 
One like this, One Who is so broad, so generous, 
so fair-minded, so great-hearted, so brotherly? 
Then I say there is nothing fine that one can 
believe in. 

There is a great lesson here for Christ’s fol- 
lowers. Christians are often tempted to be fire 
eaters, to resort to force. ‘There was a day when 
they burned heretics. The day abides when, to 


134 GOD’S OPEN 


promote the faith, some Christians would resort to 
anathemas and heresy baiting. Human nature is 
not easy to control. But grace can change human 
nature. The world is not saved by fire. 

There is a lesson. here for nations and races, as 
well as for churches. Race hatreds are the prolific 
source of wars. The colour line abides. The an- 
tagonisms between Jew and Samaritan carry over 
into other groups. Just now the French and the 
Germans hold the stage. It is easy to keep 
prejudice alive, but there is something better than 
revenge, better than competition. The world is 
spacious. “ They went to another village.” 

Christ’s example here is a tremendous rebuke of 
sectarianism, of rabid denominationalism, of big- 
otry and intolerance, and of the blind zeal that 
lights martyr fires and kindles faggots of hate. 
There is a zeal that is more concerned with boost- 
ing the denomination than with saving the world. 
Churches are located not according to need, but 
where the pasture is best. The result is, some sec- 
tions are over-churched and others neglected. It 
is not strange that, with such strategy, the church 
should go lame in the fight. If the Christian 
church is to reach the world, it must follow Christ 
and be possessed of His Spirit. 

“They went to another village.” ‘The day has 
worn to its close. Perhaps they found another vil- 
lage more hospitable. It may be that that night 
the Saviour and His disciples slept in the open 


ANOTHER VILLAGE 135 


fields. But as they went on, I think Christ’s fol- 
lowers began to think of the Sermon on the Mount. 
They recalled the Beatitudes. They thought of 
how Christ said: “ Blessed are the poor in spirit, 
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It is some- 
thing to stand on our rights, but Christ’s true fol- 
lowers think not of their rights, but of their duties. 
It is something to command fire from heaven, as 
did Elijah; but it is greater for one to deny himself 
and take up his cross and follow Jesus. It is some- 
thing to smite the enemy hip and thigh. It is 
greater to bear one another’s burdens. It is some- 
thing to burn a town. It is more Godlike to save 
a world! 





XI 


Toe PALMS, THE TEARS; AND THE 
PAWN-BROKERS 


AN UPPER CHAMBER 


I came into the City and none knew me; 

None came forth, none shouted: “ He is here! ” 
Not a hand with laurel would bestrew me 

All the way by which I drew anear— 

Night my banner, and my herald Fear. 


But I knew where one so long had waited 
In the low room at the stairway’s height, 

Trembling lest my foot should be belated, 
Singing, sighing for the long hours’ flight 
Towards the moment of our dear delight. 


I came into the City when you hailed me 
Saviour, and again your chosen Lord :— 
Not one guessing what it was that failed me, 

While along the way as they adored 
Thousands, thousands shouted in accord. 


But through all the joy I knew—I only— 
How the hostel of my heart lay bare and cold, 
Silent of its music, and how lonely! 
Never, though you crown me with your gold, 
Shall I find that little chamber as of old! 


—FRANCES BANNERMAN, 


XI 


EBA LMS) THE TEARS. AND) DHE 
PAWN-BROKERS 


“ Blessed be the king that cometh in the name of the 
Lord.” —LUKE 19: 38. 


HIS is the story of one day in the Saviour’s 
life on earth. It was His proudest day, the 
day they cheered Him, and shouted: “ Ho- 

sanna, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the 
Lord!” It was also the saddest day, the day He 
wept over Jerusalem. It was the sternest day of 
the gentlest life our world has known, for it 
was the day He used force, seizing in His kind 
hand a scourge and driving the thieves from the 
temple. 

It was the Jewish Sabbath, and the Jews were a 
very religious people, especially when it came to the 
matter of Sabbath observance. ‘They had a pro- 
found conviction when they sang: “ Hosanna to 
Christ!”? Jesus was the Hero of a religious 
parade. Let the imagination try to reproduce the 
scene. It was a spring morning. ‘The sunshine is 
brilliant. The dew tarries on the grasses and 
flowers. Great crowds surge out from the city. 
Yonder comes a man riding an ass’s colt. He is 


139 


140 GOD’S OPEN 


attended by a few peasants. When the crowd 
sees Him, it acclaims Him. ‘The people break 
branches from the palm trees, and wave them in 
salutation. They strip off their garments, and 
spread them on the ground, and shout: “ Blessed 
be the king that cometh in the name of the Lord!” 
They must have wanted a king. 

We are not so keen on kings to-day. There are 
not many of them left, and the few who are seem 
doomed. It takes no prophet to predict a day 
when not a throne will be left on earth, nor a 
crowned head in all the world. Because kings 
stand for caste, for privilege, for autocracy, for 
despotism, for the spoiling of many to make luxury 
easy for the few. The world has grown tired of 
that sort of thing, and is saying it must stop. The 
worm has turned. The rights of the common man 
are to the front. Christianity has brought in this 
creed. Greatness resides not in privilege, but in 
service. He gets most who serves best. 

Is that crowd after an autocrat when they shout 
for a king? If so, the people are foolish. If 
Christ has come to oppress, to be a despot, the 
world would not run after Him, for it does not 
need Him. Let Him go back to Bethany. The 
taxes in Jerusalem are already high enough without 
a fresh levy to deck out a new king. 

Look at the King and make up your mind as to 
whether or not He is a despot. He is the picture 
of humility. He is riding an humble beast. There 


PALMS, TEARS, PAWN-BROKERS __ 141 


is no crown on His head, no sceptre in His hand. 
He has no retinue. He is without pomp or wealth 
or splendour. He possesses no sign of royalty. 
His retainers are a dozen poor peasants. It seems 
ridiculous to call Him a King. His only ex- 
chequer is a bag that holds the dole of charity. 
Surely the people have nothing to fear from Him. 

Recall what He has been doing. He has been 
going up and down the land healing the sick, min- 
istering to the needy, feeding the hungry. People 
can love Him. They will love Him enough to die 
for Him. The only things that need fear Him are 
those that hurt the people, the foes of human wel- 
fare, the devils that destroy. 

Listen to Him. You will not need to listen long 
to discover that He has great compassion. He 
tells why He has come. It is not to forge chains, 
to add burdens. They have burdens enough. He 
has come to emancipate. “If the Son shall make 
you free, ye shall be free indeed.” 

Christ deserves the cheers of the crowd. He is 
a real Hero, a democratic King. The people have 
nothing to fear from Him. He will bind the 
people to Him by ties that are stronger than the 
grave. Men will give up all to follow Him. They 
will live for Him and die for Him. Let the palms 
wave on, and the people sing their song. Let them 
say: “ Blessed be the king that cometh in the name 
of the Lord!” For here at last is a monarch of 
Whose reign the world need never be afraid. 


142 GOD’S OPEN 


THE TEARS 

Kings are usually concerned for revenues. They 
are on the lookout for something to tax. Even re- 
publics have not been cured of this habit. Govern- 
ment is cursed by it-to-day. About all that one 
hears is taxes. Government has gotten to be a 
very expensive luxury. It costs to be civilized. 
Doubtless much of the taxes sweated from the 
people is squandered in enterprises whose only 
apology is political expediency. 

The Palm Sunday King was not thinking of 
taxes. He was not concerned for revenue. He 
was not figuring out how much more He could 
make the people pay. He was watching the 
people, pondering their needs, pitying them in 
their troubles, profoundly concerned for their 
burdens. 

He beheld the city and wept over it. That is 
what He did while the parade was at its height. 
He saw the city’s wretchedness and misery, its 
folly and sin. He looked down the years and saw 
its destruction. Then He forgot His crown and 
throne. He lost sight of the palms and the shout- 
ing. He no longer heard the cheers. He began 
to weep. All that gay spectacular faded out in a 
mist. The tears were running down His cheeks. 
“O, Jerusalem, if thou hadst known, even thou, 
at least in this thy day, the things which belong 
unto thy peace; but now they are hid from thine 
eyes!” 


PALMS, TEARS, PAWN-BROKERS 148 


You can trust yourself with that kind of a king. 
There is nothing to fear from a ruler so compas- 
sionate that human woe breaks His heart; a King 
Who loves humanity and Whose sympathy is sin- 
cere is the people’s friend. Of course rulers can 
affect concern. The lachrymal glands of the dema- 
gogue operate with ease. He loves to talk of his 
devotion to the people. He bawls it out from the 
rostrum when he is seeking votes. But after the 
election he is not so ready to die for the welfare 
of the people. 

Jesus was not a demagogue. He was a King, 
but also a Man of Sorrows. He lived His concern. 
The tears of Christ say that the people can trust 
Him. If there be a way to relieve them of their 
burden, Christ will find the way. 


THE PAWN-BROKERS 

We are not to conclude that because tears are in 
His eyes, Christ is womanish, that because He is 
tender-hearted, He is weak, that because He is the 
King of Love, He is incapable of hate, lacking in 
fiery anger against fraud and imposture, without 
scorn for that which is foul and false. He was 
the Lamb of God, but He was also the Lion of the 
tribe of Judah. 

The last scene of that fateful day is in the tem- 
ple, and gives the climax of Christ’s right to be 
called a King. The people are coming up to the 
temple to worship, to make their offerings. Here 


144: GOD’S OPEN 


‘and yonder are the tables of the money-changers 
where the people pause to get the money for their 
offering. The money-changers are slick rascals 
who charge exorbitant rates, and cheat in the 
change. They were the pawn-brokers of that day. 
‘They have become so bold and brazen and insolent 
that they associate their vile traffic with the worship 
of Jehovah, and house their infamous business in 
the temple itself. 

No one interferes. They are protected. The 
city officials have been fixed. The graft has been 
paid, so that they are without shame. Suddenly 
the King appears, this Man Who rode in on an 
ass’s colt, this peasant Rabbi, this weeper Who an 
hour ago forgot the parade given in His honour 
and turned His attention to the slums to cry over 
the poor, and Whose lashes, it may be, are still 
wet with weeping, and on Whose cheek there still 
trembles a tear of compassion. He watches the 
pawn-brokers. 

Then, without introduction, the King gets into 
action. Seizing a scourge, He attacks the money- 
changers. ‘The blows fall thick and hot on the 
heads of that slick gentry. The tables loaded with 
coin and merchandise are upset. ‘The money is 
scattered in all directions. The tumult is great. 
Rascality is always a noisy coward. Soon the 
pawn-brokers are vanquished. They run to cover. 
One honest man has broken up a nest of thieves. 
The temple courts are cleansed, and Christ says to. 


PALMS, TEARS, PAWN-BROKERS 145 


the people who look on in amazement: ‘‘ They have 
made my house a den of thieves.” 

Christ deserved the title they gave Him. He 
was a real King. The kind of king the world 
needs to-day is a man with courage to wage war 
on organized iniquity, a strong arm to unseat ras- 
cality, a righteous soul that declines to compromise 
with evil, a heart hot with indignation against the 
greed that feeds on human need and cloaks its 
hypocrisy in the garb of religion. Let the peo- 
ple sing on. They have found a real Hero at 
last, One tender-hearted enough to weep over 
human wrongs, and strong-hearted and _ stout- 
armed enough to redress them. 

Such was the King. No wonder they cheered 
Him. No wonder the world still sings: 


“All hail the power of Jesus’ name.” 


The kingdom should be like the King. It should 
have rights for the common man, tears for human 
need, and a scourge for rascality. It is for those 
who believe in Jesus, who call Him not only 
Prophet and Priest, but King, to see to it that the 
kingdom does not belie the King! 





XII 
THE PLACE WHERE THEY LAID HIM 


MY GARDEN 


A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! 
Rose plot, 

Fringed pool, 

Fern grot— 

The veriest school 

Of peace; and yet the fool 

Contends that God is not— 

Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? 
INay, but I have a sign: 

"Tis very sure God walks in mine. 


—THomas Epwarp Brown. 


XIT 
THE PLACH WHERE THEY LAID HIM 


“Come see the place where the Lord lay.” 
—MatTruEew 28:6, 
“Now in the place where he was crucified there was 
a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein 
was man never yet laid.’—JOHN 19: 41. 


EF is sitting on the stone that had been rolled 
away from the mouth of the tomb in 
_ which Joseph and Nicodemus had laid the 
dead body of Christ. He is an angel from heaven, 
and a wonder to behold. His countenance is like 
lightning, and his raiment white as snow. At sight 
of him, the soldiers set to guard the tomb were so 
scared that they trembled and became as dead men. 
The angel had descended from heaven and rolled 
back the stone from the door. When the women 
came in the gray dawn of that first Easter morning 
to anoint the dead body of Christ, they found the 
angel there at the door of the tomb sitting on the 
great stone as though waiting for them. And now 
this is his message: “ Come and see the place where 
the Lord lay.” 


AN EMPTY GRAVE 
Why invite those women to gaze in on an empty 
149 


150 GOD’S OPEN 


tomb? Christ is not there. Even His body is 
gone. Nothing but His grave clothes remain, 
neatly folded and laid aside as if to say there was 
no hurry nor confusion in the Saviour’s departure. 
But Jesus is not in the sepulchre. He is gone. He 
is walking in the garden, hard by the place where 
they laid Him. He will soon be on the road to 
Emmaus. He will visit the upper room. Ere long 
He is going to Galilee. If they would see Him, 
they must make haste. Their hearts are aching to 
see Him. They can stand the awful suspense no 
longer. Why waste time gazing at the spot where 
the Lord lay? Why pause to look in on an empty 
grave? Why waste a second? They must away 
to see the risen Christ. 

To be sure, the tomb was a lovely spot. It was 
a garden tomb. The year was at the spring. The 
fresh green of resurgent spring was on the world. 
The flowers were blooming. Nature was at its 
best. But it is not the tomb that the women have 
come to see. It is their Lord, and He is gone. 
Cemeteries may be beautiful, but the soul does not 
find life’s objective in a graveyard. ‘To be sure, 
there are hallowed associations there when the 
grave sepultures the dust of our beloved. But this 
tomb in Joseph’s garden has been broken open. It 
is empty of its guest. Then why hold the women 
there just to gaze at the place where they laid Him? 

Certainly it was not because God’s angel would 
make a tomb a shrine. Men sometimes commit 


PLACE WHERE THEY LAID HIM 151 


that folly. There has always been the peril of 
offering worship to sacred relics and holy sites, to 
bones and nails and wooden crosses. No one can 
visit certain churches in Europe which house great 
quantities of human skulls and possess shelves 
loaded with time-stained relics without being 
amazed at such exhibits in buildings erected to the 
glory of Him Who said: “ God is a spirit, and they 
that worship him must worship him in spirit and 
in truth.” Surely Christ’s tomb was never meant 
to be a shrine. 

It was not accidental that Christ left nothing for 
the senses. We do not know for a certainty just 
where Calvary was. The soldiers carried off His 
robe. The wooden cross long since has turned to 
dust. God would interest us not in things, but 
life; not in places, but in people; not in the bones 
of the dead, but in the needs of the living. A 
visit to a cemetery is no alibi for neglect of com- 
mon duty. Taking care of a grave does not atone 
for being unbrotherly. Jesus said: “ Let the dead 
bury their dead.” China is a melancholy illustra- 
tion of what befalls a nation that worships a grave. 
“The living he shall praise thee.” 


THE MESSAGE OF THE EMPTY GRAVE 
Notwithstanding all this, there were good rea- 
sons for the angel’s message to the women that 
first Easter morning when he said: “ Come see the 
place where the Lord lay.” 


152 GOD’S. OPEN 


He would have them see with their own eyes the 
most minute and circumstantial and unmistakable 
evidence of the resurrection, to assure themselves 
beyond the possibility of doubt that Christ’s body 
was not in the tomb. They looked in. Jesus was 
not there. The place was empty. He Who had 
been crucified on Calvary’s cross was gone. Where 
was He? Hope begins to beat on the door of the 
heart with that question. 

The proof of Christ’s resurrection is not hazy. 
It is of the most definite and satisfactory kind. 
Nothing is left to chance or credulity. Again and 
again the risen Christ appeared to His disciples. 
He walked and talked and supped with them. They 
saw Him. They touched Him. They discussed 
themes with Him which verified the evidence of 
their senses. His resurrection was certified to 
them by many infallible proofs. 

Nor was this all, nor indeed the strongest evi- 
dence that Christ rose. The message and ministry 
of the apostles, the trials they endured, their hard- 
ships and martyrdom, their courage, their en- 
thusiasm in the face of the cross and the cell, the 
growth of the church, the heroism of believers, the 
influence of all this on the world, and the experi- 
ence in the heart of every believer, all create a class 
of evidence in support of Christ’s resurrection that 
is well-nigh unanswerable. But there is some- 
thing more. 

The angel would have those women grasp the 


PLACE WHERE THEY LAID HIM 153 


splendour and magnitude of the miracle. They 
are looking at the place where He lay. As they do 
so, it all comes over them again. ‘They see the 
trial. They hear the shouts of the mob. They 
follow the weary Christ out to Calvary. They 
see Him nailed to the cross. They watch Him 
die. They recall the feelings they had as all 
this transpired. And now they are gazing on the 
spot where His body lay. There can be no doubt 
about it. Jesus died, but His body is not in 
the tomb. 

They have turned, and are walking down the 
garden path. All at once they see Him. There He 
is before their eyes. Listen! He is saying some- 
thing. “All hail!” They run and hold Him by 
the feet and worship Him. It is impossible for 
them to be deceived. Jesus is not in the tomb. 
The tomb is empty. He is here in the garden, 
walking and talking. Christ died, but He lives. 
He is risen from the dead. Thus the supreme fact 
of Christianity as a supernatural religion forever 
associates itself with God’s open, with an empty 
tomb and a garden path, with the place where He 
lay and the path where He walked and talked with 
His friends. 

Had they needed any further proof of His God- 
hood, they have it now. The resurrection is splen- 
did. It is magnificent. From the dust of a tomb 
Christ has passed to the power of a God. They 
are thrilled and elated. The whole world is 


154 GOD’S OPEN 


changed for them. They are charged with a cour- 
age nothing can daunt. They are clothed with a 
heroism that can play with death. They will never 
forget the place where the Lord lay. 


THE EMPTY GRAVE AND THE COMMON LIFE 


There is a great lesson in all this for the common 
life, for us as we wait by a grave or walk down a 
garden path. We must not forget our struggles 
nor allow sudden success to obscure the day of 
small beginnings. Some of life’s sublimest achieve- 
ments are hard by the place where all seemed lost. 
Shame on him who gets on in life, but would hide 
his lowly start, who becomes famous, but would 
keep from publicity the places and people with 
whom he was associated in obscurity! They are 
scrubs of the meanest breed who disown ules 
forebears. 

A great soul who has come up from a lowly 
home and plain parentage never forgets his old 
father and mother. He loves to go back to the 
cabin in the clearing, to the hut under the hill, to 
the shabby house on a cheap street, and look on 
the place where he lay, and recall the days of 
poverty and struggle, and fight off the false 
ideals which sometimes creep in with the acqui- 
sition of place and fame, of wealth and power. 
He loves to look once more into a dear old 
wrinkled face and kiss away the signs of care 
and tell the heart that loved him first that his 


PLACE WHERE THEY LAID HIM 155 


mother will always be to him what she was in 
those days of long ago. | 

It is good sometimes to recall the hours of ap- 
parent defeat, the dark days when all seemed lost. 
We are so easily spoiled. Our heads are so quickly 
turned. We forget so soon. A man makes money, 
and loses his religion. It occurs so often. He was 
a decent church member until he became prosper- 
ous. Then he forgot the days of his struggle and 
the God Who had helped him to fight his battle. 
His Sundays are devoted to recreation and sport. 
He gambles and goes the gaits. The church, the 
Sunday-school, and the prayer-meeting are all back 
numbers. He needs something to bring him to his 
senses. It is well for him to go back and look 
upon the place where he lay, to recall the times 
and days when he was poor, and try to recover his 
lost virtues and climb out of his shabby sins and 
be a man again. 

All this has a definite application to one’s per- 
sonal experience as a Christian. It is good for us 
now and then to go back and dwell on what we 
were before Christ quickened us and raised our 
souls from a grave where we were dead in tres- 
passes and sins. We sometimes grow discouraged 
in our Christian life. Then we think of what we 
were. This was David’s meditation when he 
wrote: “ He took me out of a miry pit and set my 
feet upon a rock and established my goings.” It 
is well for us in our drab moments to follow 


156 GOD’S OPEN 


David’s example until the joy of the Easter morn- 
ing begins to possess the soul, and the song is on 
our lips again, and we exchange doubt for hope, 
and despair for victory. 


THE EMPTY GRAVE AND THE CHURCH 


There are times when Christ would say to the 
church what the angel said to the women at the 
garden tomb. It is good for the Christian church 
to recall its humble beginnings, to remember the 
day when all that Jesus had was a little group of 
humble fishermen, not a building, not a school, not 
a hospital, neither wealth nor numbers nor in- 
fluence. ‘Come see the place”—not where the 
church stood prosperous, resourceful, successful, 
victorious, but where it lay despised and rejected. 

It is well for the church to have this memory to 
freshen its conviction that it is not by might nor 
by power, but by the spirit of the Lord that it is to 
accomplish its mission. ‘The church ever needs to 
learn what Elijah discovered when he found that 
God was not in the wind nor in the earthquake nor 
in the fire, but in the still small voice; what the 
apostles discovered at Pentecost, that it is through 
the baptism of the Holy Ghost rather than by 
wealth and numbers and culture and influence that 
the world is to be saved. 

Then the church is ready to turn from the empty 
tomb to the garden path, from the day of defeat to 
the signs of victory, to the triumphs of the cross, 


PLACE WHERE THEY LAID HIM 157 


to the place the world is giving Christ now, to His 
position in the life of nations, in literature and art 
and civilization. Things have changed. Christ 
has risen, and is rising. He “sees of the travail 
of his soul and is satisfied.””. “ He shall reign until 
he has put all enemies under his feet.”’ “Of the 
increase of his kingdom there shall be no end.” 
Are we like the women who came to the tomb 
troubled with doubt, disheartened, discouraged? 
“Come see the place where the Lord lay.” Then 
from the empty tomb let us turn our faces toward 
the morning, beholding along our garden path the 
risen and rising Christ until our lips are vocal with 
victory. Nothing can stop the tide. Nothing can 
stop the spring. Nothing can stop the dawn. 
Nothing can stop the life of the risen Christ. 


i} 
é pal, 4 
ae yal 





XIII 


THE FORGOTTEN WATER-POT 


WHAT CHRIST SAID 


I said, “ Let me walk in the fields;”’ 
He said, “ Nay, walk in the town ;” 

I said, “ There are no flowers there;” 
He said, “ No flowers, but a crown.” 


I said, “ But the sky is black, 
There is nothing but noise and din;” 
But He wept as He sent me back— 
“There is more,’ He said, “there is sin.” 
I said, “ But the air is thick, 
And fogs are veiling the sun;” 
He answered, “ Yet hearts are sick, 
And souls in the dark undone.” 


I said, “I shall miss the light, 
And friends will miss me, they say ;” 
He answered me, “ Choose to-night 
If I am to miss you, or they.” 


I pleaded for time to be given; 
He said, “Is it hard to decide? 
It will not seem hard in heaven 
To have followed the steps of your Guide.” 


I cast one look at the field, 
Then set my face to the town; 
He said, “ My child, do you yield? 
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?” 


Then into His hand went mine. 
And into my heart came He. 

And I walk in a light divine 
The path I had feared to see. 


—GEORGE MACDONALD. 


XITI 
THE FORGOTTEN WATER-POT 


“The woman then left her water-pot, and went her 
way into the city, and saith to the men, Come, see a 
man which told me all things that ever I did. Is not 
this the Christ?” —JoHN 4: 28, 29. 


HIS is a story of personal work. The 
worker was without personal fitness or 
preparation or experience. She was one 
who but an hour ago had found the Saviour, one 
who was neither ordained nor commissioned, who 
belonged to the laity, who was not even a lay- 
man, but just a lay-woman, and that in an age 
when women were slaves. She was a woman about 
whom there was an ugly story, a woman with a 
discredited and dishonoured record, a stained life, 
a shamed past, and a future empty of hope. 

If ever there was poor material out of which to 
make a personal worker for Christ and His king- 
dom, surely it is here. But the woman is saved. 
Her sins are forgiven. She had come to drink of 
water from Jacob’s well, and Jesus has placed to 
her parched lips the cup of life. Her tongue is 
vocal with the new message. Her feet are swift 
and eager on a new mission. Her heart is afire 

161 


162 GOD’S OPEN 


with a new passion. Her eyes are lit up with a 
new joy, and her face is aflame with a holy purpose. 

She has come for water. She has found salva- 
tion. She is going for souls. In an instant her 
whole life has changed. That neglected and for- 
gotten water-pot which she leaves behind her as 
she turns her face to the town to tell her neigh- 
bours of the Christ recites the change. It is a 
mute piece of clay, but as it lies there by the 
well’s mouth it is eloquence incarnate. It declares, 
that a human soul has found the well of salvation. 
Jacob’s well is no longer the end of the path. The 
road winds on over the hills through the haze 
toward the sky-line that is eternal. 


CHRIST’S QUEST 

Notice first Christ’s quest for a soul. He has 
gone out of His way to meet the woman at the 
well. He is on His way to Galilee, but “ He must 
needs pass through Samaria.” It is the necessity 
of bringing salvation to a perishing soul. He has 
come on a long journey to meet her. He has tray- 
elled more days and miles than she can count. He 
has been on His. way from the foundation of the 
world. Were the curtain to lift, it would disclose 
Christ with His face always toward the hour when 
He was to meet a sinful woman at Jacob’s well. 
Now at last the clock has struck high noon as He 
sits thus by the well, and yonder comes a woman 
down the path swinging her water-pot, and the 


THE FORGOTTEN WATER-POT 163 


conversation which has been on the program for 
thousands of years begins. 

Human need tugs at Christ’s heart. It draws 
Him like a magnet. He cannot stay away from a 
soul in trouble. He came to “seek and to save 
that which was lost.” It was not hard for Him 
to come. It was impossible for Him to stay away. 
Is it hard for a mother to answer the cry of her 
hurt child? How she leaps to her feet and flies to 
help! It is so when the cry of a hurt soul sounds 
in Christ’s ears. That is the cry He had heard. 
To hear it, one must live close to Him. With the 
ear of flesh we can hear only certain sound waves, 
and with the eye of flesh we can see only certain 
colour waves. But when the soul is in communion 
with Christ, it hears the inaudible and sees the in- 
visible. Redemption widens the gamut of the soul 
until we can hear and see the plight of one in the 
toils of sin. 

Christ has come a long way to meet us, too. He 
must needs go through our town, also. It is 
Jacob’s well for our souls, and Christ is waiting to 
give us not the physical, but the spiritual. He 
would cleanse our stain and lift our load and 
change our life. Let Him talk with us and turn 
life inside out and “tell us all things that ever we 
did.” This is His way. And He does it, not to 
shame us, but to save us. 

How are we receiving Him? What are we say- 
ing to the Christ Who has come so far, Who has 


164 GOD'S OPEN 

‘come by the way of the cross? Are we uncon- 
cerned? Do we stare at Him and go on drawing 
water from Jacob’s well? Are we too busy to talk 
about our souls, too occupied with filling clay 
pitchers and getting back to the dull town to give 
God an hour, and are we allowing heaven to slip 
away, leaving us as stained and poor as we were 
before the King of Day opened to our withered 
souls the gate of life? O, to listen and obey, to 
drink of the living water and go back to the town 
redeemed ! 


~ 


THE WOMAN’S QUEST 

Notice next the woman’s quest for souls. She 
has found Christ. Shall she surrender herself to 
her new joy? Shall she bide there at the well for 
the rest of that golden day and revel in rapture and 
give herself over to the thrills of her new ecstacy 
and wave good-bye to Christ as He goes on down 
the road toward Galilee, and then in the gloaming 
go back to the town swinging her water-pot and 
gaily singing: “O, happy day that fixed my 
choice’? 

She has no time to indulge her rapture. She 
forgets her water-pot and leaves Christ and hur- 
ries back to tell her neighbours of the Saviour she 
has found. She has become a personal worker. 
Such was the effect of salvation on the people in 
the New Testament. Andrew found Peter. ‘The 
man in the tombs told the men of his own village 


THE FORGOTTEN WATER-POT 165 


of his Saviour. This is Christ’s plan for the ex- 
tension of His kingdom. It was the plan followed 
by the early church. When the early Christians 
were scattered abroad they went everywhere 
preaching. The gospel is to be preached, but not 
always from a pulpit, not only in a church, often 
on the street, in the office, in an automobile, on the 
golf links, not always to a thousand people at once, 
sometimes just to one. Every believer is to be an 
evangelist. 

Watch this woman preacher as she gets into 
action. If ever a new convert was thoroughly dis- 
qualified for such work, it is she. But somehow 
she gets by. She does not stop to consider her 
lack of personal fitness, to ask what she shall say 
to the questions the men of Samaria will ask her, 
to ponder whether she possesses tact and courage, 
to ask what they will say when a woman who has 
led the life she has comes with the message she is 
bringing, to think of results, to wonder whether 
she may not do more harm than good. Ai\jl these 
things are mere tricks of the devil to hinder us in 
our work for souls. This woman swept them out 
of the way in her eager haste and holy joy to 
carry the good news. 

Listen to her message. ‘‘ Come, see a man which 
told me all things that ever I did.” That was all. 
She talked to them out of her experience. ‘T‘here 
was not a syllable beyond it. df there had been 
no experience, there would have been no message. 


166 GOD’S OPEN 


The reason some have no message is they have no 
experience. We do not need to argue with people 
about their sins, nor be able to explain to them all 
that is involved in the plan of salvation. What 
we need to do as personal workers is just to be able 
to say: “I have found great help in Christ. He 
has made life a different thing for me. I am sure 
He can do as much for you. Come and see.” 


CHRIST AND THE CROWD 


Notice next Christ and the men the woman has 
brought Him. They believed her message. ‘That 
was the marvelous thing about it. The natural 
thing would have been for the men to laugh at her, 
to ridicule her, to treat the whole thing as a joke. 
“Have you heard the news? She has religion. 
She is going up and down the street talking to 
people about their souls. She must be getting 
ready to swap husbands again. You may be sure 
she is up to some new devilment.” Suppose a 
woman with her record were to get converted in 
your town and start out on a crusade for God? 
But salvation makes a difference. It stamps the 
message with sincerity. It changes the individual. 
We do not go out alone. The only credential one 
needs for personal work is to get genuinely saved. 

They came out to the well on the woman’s testi- 
mony. There they are. How many, we are not 
told. I fancy that some of the hardest cases in 
that tough town are there. They are the woman’s 


THE FORGOTTEN WATER-POT 167 


former associates. It is the kind of crowd such a 
woman would be likely to assemble. What an 
audience! Christ has come to meet them, too. 
The woman He saved has not failed Him. How 
does she feel as Christ talks to the men she has 
brought? Her heart beats until it almost breaks 
its walls. If they would only believe in Him, too! 
‘Then there can be a new day in Samaria. These 
men can make it a new town. They can have 
happy homes. Crime can be put down, and cruelty 
and lust. The slavery of women and the rough 
days of the past will be gone. 

Jesus is talking to the men, now. His sermon to 
the crowd is not reported. His sermon to one 
woman is. Had the modern reporter been present, 
he would probably have passed by what Jesus said 
to the woman, and given us His sermon to the 
crowd. We measure the value of an address by the 
size of the audience, but the Bible does not wor- 
ship numbers. We may be sure Jesus turned the 
lives of these men inside out, too. And they also 
believed. They said: “ We want you to come into 
Samaria and speak there.” And He did. He 
spent two whole days in the city. What a wonder- 
ful time the Saviour must have had in that town 
of sinners! 

But suppose the woman had not forgotten her 
water-pot. Suppose she had listened and believed 
and said: “I must fill my pitcher and hurry back, 
for I left a thirsty man at home, and he will be 


168 GOD’S OPEN 


rough if I am late!” Suppose she had gone back 
to drudgery, and had never thought of souls. The 
town would have stayed unchanged. It would have 
remained as bad as ever. Perhaps the woman her- 
self would soon have drifted back into the old life. 
Think of what the world is missing because we do 
not forget business long enough to carry Christ’s 
message. Shall clay tools claim all of God’s time? 
Let us leave the pitcher at the well. There is big- 
ger business than carrying water. It is carrying 
salvation. 


THE WOMAN AFTER CHRIST HAD GONE 


The two days are over. Christ has gone on His 
way. The weeks are measuring into months. I 
wonder what the woman did, how she lived? I 
wonder whether the believers got together and 
talked things over and organized a little church? 
Maybe they rented a room, or had a spot out on 
the hillside under a tree. There they met to talk 
about the man whom they had met at the well. 
They did not know much, but they knew enough to 
change life. I fancy the woman kept on doing 
personal work. Perhaps the others did as much. 
Samaria felt the influence of the little church. 
Human relations began to change in that town. It 
is marvelous what one person may do. Just one 
woman whose soul is afire with holy ardour for 
Christ’s cause! She does not work alone. He 
Who said: “ Lo, I am with you alway,” 1s there. 


THE FORGOTTEN WATER-POT 169 


One day news came of a great revival in Sa- 
maria. They had gotten Philip the evangelist, and 
a great meeting was in progress. It was not pos- 
sible to handle the crowds. They send to Jerusa- 
lem for help. And the church there sends unto 
them Peter and John. Who was back of this re- 
vival at Samaria? Someone had been working and 
praying. We can allow our imaginations to fill in 
the story. The woman who forgot her water-pot 
was still under the spell of a heavenly vision. 

It is this the world needs to-day. We must have 
more than preachers and evangelists. If the world 
is to be saved, the saved must be transformed into 
personal workers. ‘There are people in every com- 
munity who have never found Christ because those 
who have found,Him have failed to carry the mes- 
sage. A prominent business man in a certain com- 
munity joined the church. Someone asked him 
why he had not done so earlier. He said: “I 
suppose it is because no one ever asked me. When 
I buy goods for my store, it is usually because 
someone comes along and tries to sell me. No 
one has ever tried to sell me Christ.” When the 
church gets dead in earnest and really believes in 
the supreme value of a soul, the business of Chris- 
tians will be to “carry on” in succession with her 
who forgot her water-pot and went her way to tell 
her friends of Him Who alone has the living water 
for a thirsty world! 


NN ytd 
2 ¥ ? {yy i 
i ¥ ie 





XIV 


THE WHITE FIELDS 


THE CHURCH IN THE WILDWOOD 


There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood 
No lovelier place in the dale; 

No spot is so dear to my childhood 
As the little brown church in the vale. 


How sweet on a clear, Sabbath morning 
To list to the clear-ringing bell, 

Its tones so sweetly are calling: 
O, come to the church in the vale. 


There, close by the church in the valley, 
Lies one that I loved so well; 

She sleeps, sweetly sleeps, ‘neath the willow; 
Disturb not her rest in the vale. 


There, close by the side of that loved one, 
’Neath the tree where the wild flowers bloom, 
When the farewell hymn shall be chanted, 
I shall rest by her side in the tomb. 


—WILLIAM S. Pirts. 


XIV 
THE WHITE FIELDS 


“Lift up your heads and look on the fields, for they 
are white already to harvest.”’—JOHN 4: 35. 


HE, white fields of the world’s need,—not 

the green fields, not even the fields that 

have turned from green to gold, not the 
fields that have faded brown and withered sere 
under the biting frost, but the fields that are white, 
that are dead ripe, that are clamouring for the 
sickle, that are saying to the reapers: “ We must be 
garnered or we perish.” 

Such was Christ’s picture of the world’s spirit- 
ual need, of the harvest fields in that land, and in 
every land, of that age and in every age, into which 
He would send His servants. He paints two 
things into the picture. One is urgency and the 
other is entreaty. Was there ever such urgency? 
It is a race with death. There is no time for 
delay. 

He seems to say to them: “ You have a proverb 
that four months come between seed time and har- 
vest. But it is not thus in my kingdom. ‘The 
harvest follows swift on the sowing of the seed. 
Behold, the men of Samaria are coming. But an 


173 


174 GOD’S OPEN 


hour ago here beside the well 1 sowed the seed in 
the heart of a sinful woman, and now, lift up your 
eyes and look on the white fields. These men are 
ready for the message. They are ripe for God’s 
harvest.” It is so everywhere and always, for the 
soul needs God and the weary world is dead ripe 
to be brought home to Him. If Christ’s disciples 
could only realize this, there would be a glorious 
season of ingathering the whole year around. The 
days of waiting are over. What is needed is to 
catch the vision of white fields and thrust in the 
sickle. 

There is entreaty in the picture, too. It is the 
heart of Christ pleading for those for whom He 
died. It is the wounds of Christ pleading with 
those He has redeemed. It is the sight of souls 
whose day will fade into night, and whose chance 
will perish unless the reapers come. It is the agony 
of God in travail for His own. Is it nothing to 
those whom He has saved that Christ yearns for 
all whom the Father has given Him? Shall we 
turn away from the cross where we have been 
loosed from our load of sin, and say: “ No, let 
Him call; I will not answer; let Him agonize; I do 
not care; let Him travail for souls; so far as I am 
concerned, He shall not be satisfied; let them 
perish ; | am not disturbed ” ? 

In the preceding chapter, we stopped before the 
picture of the woman who left her forgotten water- 
pot beside the well in her eager haste to carry the 


THE WHITE FIELDS 175 


glad news of her Saviour to the men of her town. 
It was a lesson in personal work. In this chapter, 
it is the picture of white fields. It is the challenge 
which a critical and desperate situation of world 
need makes to Christ’s followers. It is a situation 
that calls for self-denial, for a faith that practices 
heroism and sacrifices itself in order that souls 
without the bread of life may be fed, and lips 
parched with the thirst that slays not the body but 
the spirit may drink and live. 


WORLD FIELDS 

The white fields of the world are the non- 
Christian nations of the earth. Those who study 
the New Testament, seeking only to know Christ’s 
will, find no difficulty in reaching the conclusion 
that the business of the church is world evangel- 
ization. “Go ye into all the world and preach the 
gospel to every creature” is a command that can 
be neither abridged nor repealed. The field is the 
world. 

The field is not the church. The field is outside 
the church in God’s open. The church is the force. 
The church does not exist for its own entertain- 
ment and profit. Worship is not the end of relig- 
ion. Culture is not. Even service is not. All 
these are fundamental phases of Christian experi- 
ence, but the business of the church is to carry the 
gospel into all the earth, until no soul is without 
the knowledge of Christ. The apostolic church so 


176 GOD’S OPEN 


understood it, and any church that neglects it can- 
not please Christ. 

The church is the passion of Calvary organ- 
ized, militant, aggressive, evangelistic. The cross 
is the passion of God for a lost world throb- 
bing in a Person. The church is the passion of 
God for a lost world throbbing in an organiza- 
tion. Calvary is God’s passion expressing itself. 
The church is His passion in action,—overcom- 
ing barriers, conquering hostility, enlisting adher- 
ents, until the lost find their way back to the 
Father’s house. 

There are some who regard this as fanatical and 
unnecessary. They do not believe in foreign mis- 
sions. They regard any religion as good enough, 
provided it be sincerely held. ‘They consider the 
religion which a nation gets as a product of its own 
evolutionary processes, the best for that nation. 
They have never seen the white fields. A member 
of the church I serve was in the habit of paying 
all his church dues for the year with a check. It 
was not a large one. Always across the face of 
the check he wrote: “ Not a cent for foreign mis- 
sions.”’ One day it fell to my lot to conduct his 
funeral. His checks, scarred with that challenge 
of Calvary, repudiating the cause for which the 
Saviour gave His life, seemed to rise up in judg- 
ment against him. ‘There are perhaps those who 
are not so bold in their opposition, but who are as 
pronounced in their indifference to the challenge 


THE WHITE FIELDS nly ee 


which comes from the white fields of the world’s 
need. 

But to-day people who read and think and travel 
with their eyes open have ceased to sneer at mis- 
sionaries. ‘hey are finding that the Christian mis- 
sionary is the real statesman of the new world. It 
is not possible to have a world one half pagan and 
one half Christian, one half motived by hate and 
one half motived by love. The problems of the 
world are one. The problems of the East and of 
the West are the same. There is no Oriental prob- 
lem that is not also an Occidental problem. The 
wrongs of China are America’s wrongs, also. The 
perils of France are not national, but international. 
Therefore, when natiotis come together to consider 
these problems, the problems must be approached 
and attacked by people of the same motives and 
standards and ideals. ‘This means an international 
mind. 

We are finding that the only psychology for an 
international mind is a recognition of the obligation 
of the service ideal. Nations can get nowhere in 
solving world problems until they recognize that 
peoples are great, not as they enslave, but as they 
serve. The service ideal is a monopoly of the 
religion of Him Who said: “I am among you as 
one that serves.” The Christian missionary who 
teaches wherever he goes the service standard of 
life is the exponent of the only statesmanship that 
can end war and make nations friendly. 


178 GOD’S OPEN 


We are finding, too, that on the world fields the 
church is realizing its own oneness perhaps as no- 
where else. Sectarianism has no standing when 
'God’s people are face to face with the white fields. 
What difference does it make whether one be 
Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or 
what not, when it comes to saving the grain that is 
about to perish? ‘Then what needs is to put 
dogmas into cold storage and get busy with the 
sickle. 

Missionaries are the hope of the people in those 
lands where human life is cheap, where the sordid 
materialism incident to a factory life that knows 
nothing of the Golden Rule, is beginning to cast its 
long and awful shadows. There human life is 
already cheap. The only thing that will save 
women who are already slaves, that will drag the 
children out from under the wheels of the car of 
this modern Molech, is a gospel that fights ma- 
terialism with the spiritual, and insists that human 
beings are made in God’s image, and that men must 
treat each other as brothers. 

These and other similar discoveries, as well as 
the message of personal salvation to the individual, 
are the credentials of the missionary to-day. He is 
in a big business. He is the statesman of the new 
age. He is the forerunner of world brother- 
hood. Do not sneer at him. Do not pity him. 
Esteem it a sublime privilege to share in his glori- 
ous adventure. 


THE WHITE FIELDS 179 


PRESENT DAY URGENCY 

The white fields were never more urgent than 
to-day. They are open. Time was when they 
were closed. Time was when a missionary was 
called a foreign devil. He is called such no more. 
He is not only tolerated to-day, he is welcomed. 
He has become the confidential adviser of the may- 
ors of cities, and of the governors of provinces, 
who seek to translate into the life of their country 
some of the things that have blessed us in this 
western world. The non-Christian nations of the 
earth are coming more and more to realize that the 
civilization they need cannot be built on the Koran, 
nor on the teachings of Confucius, nor on the 
mysticism of Buddha. It must come through 
Christ. 

Christianity has shown that it can meet the 
world’s need. It is no longer an empty boast or a 
doubtful experiment. It is a demonstration. It 
can handle any situation. It can change social con- 
ditions. If people will only faithfully practice its 
teachings, it and all similar efforts will get them 
out of the jungle. The gospel will cure the 
troubles of the world. 

We have learned that no program of world 
reconciliation which leaves out Christ can hope to 
succeed. It must have the Christian dynamic. 
The Arms Conference made a splendid stagger 
toward reconciliation. But it will prove futile to 
prevent war without a national conscience, with- 


180 GOD’S OPEN 


out national good-will, without ‘the Golden Rule. 
Christianity is the only thing that can make the 
world safe and keep the road clear for human 
progress. | 

The growth of modern missions has been steady 
and arresting. Within ten years the church has 
practically doubled its missionary gifts, and cor- 
respondingly multiplied the force in the field. 
Despite this, its success in mission fields has run 
ahead of the force to such an extent that there is 
scarcely a mission Board that does not carry a large 
debt. Is this to be regarded as a disaster? Are we 
to lament a success that transcends our preparation 
for garnering the harvest? Should we not rather 
consider the dead ripe fields which face the Chris- 
tian church to-day as a stirring challenge to in- 
creased sacrifice and self-denial ? 

It is not an impossible task which confronts the 
Christian church as it lifts its eyes to the white 
fields. Nothing is impossible with a sufficient spir- 
itual dynamic. For centuries the Nile was a mys- 
tery to the people of Egypt. Running through 
rainless regions, carrying fertility to what other- 
wise would have been sterile sands, the river was 
the source of Egypt’s prosperity and power. But 
what if the river should run dry? Where did its 
mystic waters come from? Suppose the source of 
supply should fail? ‘The rich delta would wither 
and the land would die. But they have found that 
the Nile rises in the high mountains whose mighty 


THE WHITE FIELDS 181 


peaks are covered with eternal snows. There on 
the summits of mighty Ruwenzori are the undying 
sources of the mystic river that has made Egypt’s 
desert into a garden. And so it is with the church 
of Christ. The unfailing sources of its power are 
on high. Yonder are the white fields, but above 
the white fields is the white throne, and the church 
which connects with these heights is equal to its 
task of world redemption. 


hi} 


HY th 
Dn) hes 


Pai 





XV 


MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY 


DAWN AND DARK 


God with His million cares 

Went to the left or right, 

Leaving our world; and the day 
Grew night. 


Back from a sphere He came 

Over a starry lawn, 

Looked at our world; and the dark 
Grew dawn. 


—NorMAN GALE, 


XV. 
MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY. 


“Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, 
and leadeth them up into a high mountain apart by 
themselves; and he was transfigured before them.” 

—MArK 9:2. 


HOSE, who travel on the surface of this 
incident will find it easy to condemn the 
transfiguration as a waste of time It 
seems foolish, selfish, and empty of meaning. 
Here were some professional soul-savers, some 
widely advertised welfare workers, having a picnic, 
indulging in a wake, holding a séance, giving them- 
selves over to meaningless rhapsodies, while the 
grinding, groveling, sinning, needy world down 
there in the plain below goes to the devil. 

Jesus has taken Peter and James and John, His 
apostolic favourites, for a little outing to the moun- 
tain. They have climbed to the summit of Her- 
mon, and there they get their view. But it is not 
scenery they behold. It is not a panorama of 
mountain, valley, and plain, of river, sea, and lake, 
stretching away to where land and sky meet. They 
see beyond the sky-line. They are looking across 
the great divide into eternity. As they watch 

185 


186 GOD’S OPEN 


Jesus, a strange change takes place in His appear- 
ance. His form and features are the same, but His 
Person is more radiant than the sun. His very 
garments shimmer and shine with a great light. 
The essential glory of Jesus shines out and sud- 
denly in that lustrum they see Moses and Elias 
talking with Christ. Peter felt that he, too, must 
say something. To make conversation, he blurted 
out: “It is good to be here. Let us erect three 
tents. Let us make the picnic permanent. Let us 
forget the struggle and sin down there in the 
plain.” ‘Then a voice from above said: “ This is 
my beloved son. Hear him.” Suddenly the pic- 
ture dissolves. ‘The voice is silent. Moses and 
Elias have gone, and “they see no man save 
Jesus only.” 

Such was the transfiguration. Granted that it 
occurred,—and there are those who have their 
doubts and say it was a case of hypnotism,—but 
granted that it happened as told, is it not a stupid 
and extravagant incident? Would not these men 
better be down there where they are needed, min- 
istering to human want and suffering, than up here 
on the mountain-top having a holy picnic? Of what 
earthly value can their pious hysterics and celestial 
thrills be to a torn, worn, and bleeding world? 

It must be admitted that there is a kind of reli- 
gion that never gets beyond the picnic stage. Its 
sublimest experience is a soul-fest. It is intro- 
‘spective, meditative, hysterical, gullible. It is 


MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY 187 


stupid and selfish. It forgets the sobbing, suffer- 
ing world, and is absorbed with its own mental 
states. It studies the Bible not to discover the plain 
face of duty, but to detect some hidden and occult 
meaning of unfulfilled prophecy. It nurses its 
fancies, coddles its moods, and like Peter, makes 
conversation by proposing to keep God in the 
family and perpetuate the picnic. 

Such a conception of religion cannot be too 
strongly condemned, whether the people who prac- 
tice it call themselves Holy Rollers or Holy Jump- 
ers or Disciples or Millennial Dawn or just students 
of the word. Religion is practical. It must get 
somewhere. It must help somebody. If it is 
nothing but a séance, it is a fraud. If the trans- 
figuration stops there, it is unworthy of a place in 
the New Testament. But those who go beneath 
the surface find that the transfiguration is one of 
the sublimest incidents in the life of Jesus. Three 
great facts are imbedded in the story. 


VINDICATION 


The transfiguration was a vindication. It was 
heaven certifying the genuineness of Christ’s claim. 
A cloud drifts in and wraps its white folds like a 
turban around the peak on which they stand, until 
the world is blotted out. Then the cloud becomes 
vocal, not with the roar of thunder, but with the 
voice of God, Who says: “ This is my beloved son. 
Hear him.” 


188 GOD’S OPEN 


It was a vindication to Christ of the reality of 
His mission. Did there ever come to Him seasons 
of blinding, baffling doubt? It seemed to be such a 
season there in the garden, when He was in an 
agony. ‘‘ What shall I say?” He cried. “If it 
be possible, let this cup pass from me!” Jesus was 
human enough to be tired, hungry, thirsty, lonely. 
Was He human enough sometimes to wonder 
whether He might not be mistaken about Himself, 
whether after all He was not just a common, clay 
man, deluding Himself with the idea that He had a 
divine mission? 

surely He had a right to a word of encourage- 
ment, to a bit of reassurance, to an hour when the 
sky rolls up its curtain and glory flames out to 
salute its King. He was ever trying to strengthen 
the faith of others. Suppose His own faith should 
break down? It would be the tragedy of the world. 
Hence God comes to His Son. Heaven opens. the 
door to its King, just wide enough to say: “ You 
are not mistaken. You are the brightness of the 
Father’s glory. You are the chosen one. ‘The 
world may crucify, but heaven waits to acclaim, 
to welcome, to crown!” Jesus can now go on 
Fis way. 

It was also a vindication to His disciples. We 
know they had their seasons of doubt. One day 
they asked: “ Who art thou?” Again they said: 
“Thou art the Christ!” Now they are acting as if 
Jesus is God, and now as though He were only a 


MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY 189 


weak man. They need certitude. They get it on 
the mountain-top. ‘“‘ This is my beloved son.” 
They must never doubt again. Satisfied, they are 
ready for what awaits them. They cannot talk 
about the transfiguration, for there are some things 
too holy to be subjected to the stares and scoffs and 
sneers of the unbelieving crowd. ‘They will not 
wear the transfiguration on their sleeves. They 
will cherish it in their hearts. In the blinding tem- 
pest, when threatened by doubt, they will think of 
the mountain-top and carry on. 

It is likewise a vindication for you and me, pass- 
ing on to us over the faith of these apostles a faith 
that was tested out in the fiercest conflict. There 
is much about Christ we cannot understand. Rea- 
son has no explanation, but where reason halts, 
imagination marches. We can behold the picture 
and be reassured. The Christ of the transfigura- 
tion can be trusted not only for this life, but for 
that which is to come. This is the first thing in 
the incident,—vindication. Were it all, it would be’ 
enough to make that mountain-top holy forever. 


REVELATION 


The transfiguration was a revelation of immor- 
tality, of the fact that death does not end all, that 
the grave does not destroy identity, that dead 
people can be recognized two thousand years after 
they have died, recognized by people who never 
saw them. There is something in the glorified 


190 GOD’S OPEN 


face which not only carries identity, but is self- 
announcing. Peter, James and John had never 
seen Moses and Elias, but they had no difficulty in 
knowing who they were. Moses and Elias talked 
to Jesus. Not only did their existence continue, 
not only was their identity maintained, but their 
mental processes were abiding. What more do 
you want? ‘This is what the transfiguration re- 
veals concerning the future life. This is its mes- 
sage concerning the grave. Why should we fear 
death, or mourn our loved ones as lost from our 
fellowship forever? 

The transfiguration was a revelation that demon- 
strated the reality of the spiritual world. It says 
more than that the soul survives death. Moses and 
Elias have been somewhere during the past two 
thousand years. They seem to have kept up with 
what was going on. They were interested in cur- 
rent events. They knew what was about to take 
place. They were talking with Jesus, and we know 
what they discussed. It was the decease which He 
was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. They knew 
why Jesus was on earth, that He was about to die. 
They knew where and when He would die, and 
they knew that His death would be not a defeat but 
an achievement. They were celestial ambassadors 
to discuss what was of keenest interest in the world 
of spirits. 

We regard the realm of sense as reality. We 
spend ourselves on that. But we are soaking ina 


MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY 191 


spiritual atmosphere. The soul does not enter a 
void at death. It enters a sphere throbbing with 
intense life. Jesus came that we might have life, 
-and have it more abundantly,—not that we might 
have a dull time, but enter upon the great adventure 
in which no moment shall be stale. This is what 
the transfiguration reveals. But even this is not all. 

It was a revelation of the character of the resur- 
rected body, of something that cannot be portrayed 
in words. If this body were described to us, the 
description would puzzle rather than inform. But 
the transfigured body was there before their eyes. 
They saw what could not be said. No wonder they 
were not allowed to talk about it. They could never 
tell it accurately. ‘“ With what body do they 
come?” “Thou fool!” But because the resur- 
rected body cannot be described, it is not to be 
doubted. While “it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be,” “ we know that when he shall appear, we 
shall be like him.” ‘The resurrected body will be 
like Christ’s transfigured body. It will be glori- 
ous. There will be no blemishes. Jameness and 
blindness and weariness will be gone forever. It 
will be beautiful with glory until the very raiment 
of the saints is transfigured, shining like burnished 
gold and glistening like the spotless snow. It will 
gleam with a whiteness that stands out against the 
snowy background of Hermon as the radiance of 
the burnished sun dulls and deadens the white face 
of the noon. 


192 GOD’S OPEN 


This is the second thing in the transfiguration,— 
the revelation. It is a chapter in the life of Jesus 
that reaches beyond the stars. But even this is not 
all, There is one thing more. 


PREPARATION 


The transfiguration was preparation. While it 
transpired on the mountain-top, a very different 
scene was enacting itself in the valley. While 
Christ’s face shone with a supernatural light, while 
Moses and Elias were talking about Calvary and 
Peter was making irrelevant remarks, and the voice 
in the cloud was certifying Christ’s divine origin, 
the other disciples were down there at the foot of 
the mountain, with trouble and sickness, with 
calamity and impending death. They were doing 
their best, but it was without avail. A father had 
brought his afflicted child, and the lad is torn with 
a dumb and deaf demon. The horror takes place 
before their very eyes. It is not a glimpse into 
heaven, but a look in on hell, that greets them. 
Here is where the soul-savers and welfare workers 
are needed,—not up there on the peak with their 
rhapsody, but down here in the valley of need at 
close grip with despair. 

They are coming down from the mountain-top. 
It was not a place to stay. It was just a place to 
be equipped. They are coming down with the spell 
of that hour on them, coming fresh from contact 
with the eternal to face desperate, unyielding, inso- 


MOUNTAIN-TOP AND VALLEY 193 


lent human misery and suffering. I fancy the 
other disciples greet them coldly, and ask: ‘‘ Where 
have you been? Here is your place. Here is your 
task. We have been on duty. We have needed 
you.” But directly they discover that the men who 
have been on the mountain-top have not been wast- 
ing their time. They have been preparing for ser- 
vice. They have brought to that stubborn case of 
human need a victorious faith, a triumphant certi- 
tude, the challenging and convincing confidence of 
those who have seen the eternal and heard the voice 
of God. 

Watch the transfigured Christ at the foot of the 
mountain. He is not less radiant and sublime than 
He was on the summit. He is not afraid. He has 
no doubts. Heaven has just commissioned Him 
afresh. The battery of His wonderful Personality 
has just been recharged from the dynamo of the 
infinite. The father tells his story and presents his 
afflicted child. Jesus asks: “‘ Canst thou believe?” 
Is He trying to slip out on a technicality? Never! 
The demon is cast out. It is an awful struggle 
that leaves the lad apparently dead. But Jesus lifts 
him into his father’s arms, restored, emancipated. 
Then more clearly than ever they understand the 
transfiguration. 

God gives us a great hour on the summit with 
Him that we may give Him a great day of service 
in the valley with our fellowmen. He cures doubt 
and kindles hope and enchants and reassures, not 


194 GOD’S OPEN 


that we may have spells and dwell apart from the 
torn and pestered world as it wallows and foams in 
its despair, but that we may come with victory and 
confidence to minister and heal. 

Have we been_on the mountain-top with Him? 
They are waiting for us in the valley, and He will 
be with us in the depths no less than on the 
heights; and as we cast out unclean things in His 
name, we shall find that the transfiguration is more 
than a vision; it is an experience; more thar a 
memory ; it is what God means every day to be like. 


XVI 


A SENSE OF FAR HORIZONS 


THE HILLS OF REST 


Beyond the last horizon’s rim, 
Beyond adventure’s farthest quest, 
Somewhere they rise, serene and dim, 

The happy, happy Hills of Rest. 


Upon their sunlit slopes uplift 

The castles we have built in Spain— 
While fair amid the summer drift 

Our faded gardens flower again. 


Sweet hours we did not live go by 
To soothing note, on scented wing; 
In golden-lettered volumes lie 
The songs we tried in vain to sing. 


They all are there: the days of dream 
That build the inner lives of men; 

The silent, sacred years we deem 
The might be, and the might have been. 


Some evening when the sky is gold 
I'll follow day into the west; 

Nor pause, nor heed, till I behold 
The happy, happy Hills of Rest. 


—ALBERT BicELOW PAINE. 


XVI 
A SENSE OF FAR HORIZONS 


“He brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now 
toward heaven, and tell the stars. . . .”’—-GENESIS 15: 5. 


HERE does your sky-line end? Abram 
sat in his tent with the flap down. He 
was shrouded in gloom. He was tented 

in despair. His world was small, and he was say- 
ing to himself: “Life has been a failure. I had 
thought to found a nation, but old age is on me, 
and my dream is gone. I am childless, and hope is 
dead, and the future offers but a grave.” Then 
God invaded the gloom. He threw back the flap 
to the old man’s tent and said: “‘ Abram, come out- 
side and look toward heaven. Dream again!” 
And he did, and his manhood returned. He saw 
the stars. He saw that the world was bigger than 
the patch of ground on which his tent was pitched. 
He saw that the sky was higher than his ridge-pole. 
He got a sense of far horizons. His soul revived, 
and turning his back on the grave, the old man 
went away to found a nation. 

One’s horizon is his sky-line. It is the boundary 
of his world, the outer rim of his universe. It is 
where his seas lave the ether shores, and his conti- 


197 


198 GOD’S OPEN 


nents cut into the heavens. His horizon is the goal 
toward which his feet travel, and its lights are the 
beacons which beckon and allure him. 

Some men have a short horizon. They live in a 
small world. They live for the day, for the gratifi- 
cation of the passing moment. ‘They measure 
things by what is nearest. They want a quick 
delivery, and value only that which can be turned 
into cash on the spot. They are opportunists, and 
lack perspective. They live as if the way things 
are is the way they must stay, as if the stretch of 
the road they are on fixes the style of the road for- 
ever, as if life were a blind alley, and existence a 
tent in the desert with the flap down. 

It is a poor way to live. It shortens everything. 
It deadens existence. It shrouds us in gloom, and 
tempts us to despair. We need a sense of far 
horizons. We need to walk outside and look 
around, to gaze away across the fields, beyond the 
wide-extended plains, over the foothills and past 
the tall ranges to the far horizons, to the world 
which loses itself in the stretches of unbridled 
space. Have you climbed by a road that was long 
and toilsome, out of a flat country to a mountain- 
top? The road wound and wound, and for a long 
time there were no vistas. The hill in front of you 
seemed the end of the world. The barriers about 
you hedged and oppressed you. ‘Then suddenly 
you stepped out where the curtain lifted, and the 
world broke away across green fields and hazy 


A SENSE OF FAR HORIZONS 199 


ridges and majestic peaks into ample distances. 
You had a vision of far horizons, and your soul 
leaped at the sight. It was something like this that 
God did for Abram. He took him out where he 
could see, where he could discover the bigness of 
the world and in the glory of that discovery shake 
off his gloom. It is what He would do for all. 


THE SPELL OF THE INFINITE 


He would give us a sense of far horizons. ‘To 
tired, discouraged, defeated men and women who 
feel there is nothing left to live for, He lifts the 
curtain and reveals the bigness and glory and end- 
less possibilities of life. To those who are sordid 
and grasping, whose souls are so hectored by the 
senses and whose spirits are so tethered to fleshly 
appetites that they barter eternity for time and sell 
out their birthright for a mess of pottage, He 
says: “ Look now toward heaven!” Get a vista. 
Dream of glory. This life is not all. There is 
more for you to consider than the profits of the 
present, more to live for than the pleasures of the 
passing hour. 

Man needs a perspective. He needs to get him- 
self and his work in right relations to God and 
His world. One reason we get so quickly discour- 
aged and are so easily defeated is that we have 
lost our outlook. We see nothing but a blank wall 
ahead. A great artist wrote “amplius”’ across the 
work of the young student. So across our vision 


200 GOD'S OPEN 


God is continually writing “ wider, higher, longer, 
farther, bigger!”” He would bring us under the 
spell of the infinite. He would capture our imagi- 
nations and suffuse our souls with a sight of ce- 
lestial vistas. 

Here is the worth of the supernatural in religion, 
and I would not give much for any religion that 
lacks it; yet there are people who try to explain 
everything away. They would reduce the universe 
to a formula. They rebel at miracles. They pro- 
test against the virgin birth, the dual nature of 
Christ, and the resurrection. They would shorten 
everything and measure it by their little yardstick. 
They want to weigh and label and pigeonhole the 
universe. The result is, life is left without a per- 
spective. ‘The horizon is torn down, and the soul 
is clapped into a windowless cell where the lights 
are out and the bolt is shot. Religion becomes a 
cave-dweller’s creed. Better a cosmopolitan relig- 
ion that makes one a citizen of the universe; a 
creed with vast vistas and big forces and dizzy 
heights and stretches which break away toward the 
infinite ; a religion which leads out of the cave and 
says: “ Look now toward heaven!’ 

This is the preciousness of heavenly hope. We 
are pilgrims here, but we seek a country. This life 
is packed with trouble. Yonder is a mother with a 
dead child against her cheek, there a father with a 
wild boy on his heart, there a home whose happi- 
ness is in ruins, and yonder a youth whose sky is 


A SENSE OF FAR HORIZONS 201 


overcast with clouds ere the day is well begun. 
The world is full of trouble. But God says: “ The 
world is only a tiny corner of my universe. Look 
away to the land of light and song. ‘There is 
no despair there, and no sorrow. Look toward 
heaven!’’ Some feel that heaven is an old- 
fashioned religion. They say: “This is our 
world.” So it is, but it is not all. Do not take 
away the hope of heaven. Do not destroy our 
dream. Christ painted the picture Himself, that 
we might have a sense of far horizons. 

This, too, is the mystery of prayer. We think 
sometimes of prayer as a cheap way of getting 
what we are disinclined to work for ourselves, as 
a scheme to induce the Almighty to upset His ad- 
ministration of the universe in order to meet our 
special need and gratify our personal whims. 
Prayer is a far higher and holier thing. It is the 
soul projecting itself out toward the infinite. Are 
enemies threatening? Does temptation imperil? 
Pray! ‘ Look toward heaven! ” 

This is what God means when He says: “ Have 
faith.” Faith is looking beyond the seen into the 
unseen. It is having a sky-line out there beyond 
the purple rim of things, beyond the amber sunsets, 
far out on that glory ledge, where eternal man- 
sions lift. 

It is what God means when He says: “ Have 
hope.” Stretch your world and move into bigger 
quarters. Move on into diviner surroundings. It 


202 GOD’S OPEN 


is also the message of love. Love laughs at bars. 
Love requires liberty. Love defies all barriers 
which would keep it from its own. Caste comes 
and builds a sky-line across the wall of love, and 
says to love: “Stop! Your world ends here!” 
But love says: “ No, my world is om the other side 
of your wall. Caste cannot shorten my horizon!” 
Then love tears down the walls of caste, for love 
has far horizons. Love “ bearetl» all things, be- 
lieveth all things, hopeth all things.” 

And so all that God does and says would seem to 
be just for this. The revelation of the supernat- 
ural, the doctrine of heaven, the sanctity of prayer, 
the summons of faith and hope and love, are all to 
bring life under the spell of the eternal, and to give 
to poor, time-badgered, sense-pestered souls the 
thrill and call of the far horizon. 


HUMAN NEED 


Man needs a sense of far horizons to save his 
soul, to deliver him from dirt, to keep him from 
groveling, from degenerating into a mere animal, 
to keep him from living as if there were nothing to 
live for but a living. There are men who see 
nothing beyond their daily wage. They never have 
a thought higher than their heads. They are in the 
tread-mill, and go through the daily grind. Life is 
slavery. God says: “ Look toward heaven! Man, 
you are immortal! Live as if you had forever!” 

Man needs it to help him find himself. He will 


A SENSE OF FAR HORIZONS 203 


never find his powers until he gets beyond his 
depth. He is at his best with a sense of vastness 
on him. The infinite summons. He needs it for 
the sake of his work, to transfigure it, to lift it 
into dignity, to invest it with permanence and make 
it a delight. 

He needs the far horizon to steady his convic- 
tions. Somebody said: “ Why object? It will do 
no good.” And that is a common way to view 
life. If things are not going your way, go their 
way. Be a trimmer. Wag your head with the 
majority. ‘Then is the time for the man who wants 
to be more than a pigmy to look beyond the crowd, 
past majorities, and say, as true men have always 
said: “ Here I stand!” ‘The trouble is, people get 
short-circuited and go to pieces in a moral crisis. 
The opinions of the crowd tap them, and they sur- 
render. What they need is to live in contact with 
the currents from God’s throne. 

Where does your sky-line end? Are you living 
in too small a world? Are you thinking only of 
the present, of your business, your wages, your 
troubles and failures? Are you a mere provincial? 
Has life become stale, and existence dreary? 

Break away! Venture out! Push aside the cur- 
tain! Lift the flap to your tent and walk out under 
the stars!) Ask God to do for you what He did for 
John on Patmos. The lonely island was the exile’s 
prison, and the seas seemed to sing the requiem of 
hope. But John was in the spirit on the Lord’s 


204 GOD’S OPEN 


day, and he saw beyond the island, and across the 
seas, past all the barriers of time, into the glory, 
and heard the choir chant angelic anthems. O, for 
an Apocalypse, for a revelation that will break up 
the monotony of the cell and the cave, for a glimpse 
into glory that will transfigure drudgery and widen 
out our island crag into Jerusalem the Golden! 

And so God’s open is higher than the roof of the 
world, taller than the tallest mountain, wider than 
the widest sea, and ampler than the dimmest sky- © 
line, farther than the farthest stars,—God’s far 
horizon is the infinite! 


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The Christian Credentials 
An Appeal of Faith to Doubt. Introduction by 
S. Parkes Cadman, D.D. $1.50. 


Commencing with a review of the present theological 
situation, Dr. Lawrence depicts the character of the Di- 
vine Founder of Christianity, discusses the divine element 
in Christian origins, marshals the arguments of personal 
experiences, adduces the witness of history, and concludes 
with a survey of the religious trend and tendency of the 
age. 


RT. REV. JAMES E. FREEMAN, D.D. 
Bishop of Washingtom 
Everyday Religion $1.50. 


*“Here are gathered together about ninety short ser- 
mons, part of a harvest of a generous and constant 
sowing from the hand and heart and brain of the Bishop 
of Washington, related to the more practical phasea of 
teligion.—Christian Advocate. 


as ly 


HELPFUL SERMONS 
i 


JAMES I. VANCE, D.D., LL.D. 


Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tens. 


In the Breaking of the Bread 
Communion Addresses. $1.25. 


“A volume of communion addresses marked by deep 
Spiritual insight and knowledge of the human heart. They 
are well adapted to awaken the spiritual conceptions which 
should accompany the observance of the Lord’s Supper— 
suggestions fitted for a communion occasion. The ad- 
dresses all bear: upon the general theme of the Lord’s Sup- 
per and showed marked spirituality of thought and fervency 
of expression.”’—United Presbyterian. 


TEUNIS E. GOUWENS Pastor Second Presbyterian 
a ee Church, Louisvtlle, Ky, 


The Rock That Is Higher 
And Other Addresses. $1.25. 


An unusually successful volume of discourses of which 
Dr. Charles S. Macfarland of the Church Federal Council, 
says: ‘‘Contents the intellect because it first satisfies the 
heart, and commands the incontestable assent of human 
experience........ As I have read it I have found my 
conscience penetrated, my faith deepened and my hope 
quickened.” 


W. RUSSELL BOWIE, D.D. 


Rector of St. Paul’s Church, Richmond, Va. 


The Road of the Star 


and Other Sermons, $1.50. 


A volume of addresses which bring the message of 
Christianity with fresh and kindling interpretation to the 
immediate needs of men. ‘The extraordinary distinction 
of Dr. Bowie’s preaching rises from the fact that to 
great vigor of thought he has added the winged power of 
an imagination essentially poetic. ) 


JOSEPH JUDSON TAYLOR, D.D., LED: 
Author of ‘The Sabbatic Question,” ‘The God af War,” ete. 


Radiant Hopefulness ‘ 

1.00. 
A message of enheartenment, a word of cheer, for men 
and women whose hearts have been fearful, whose spirits 
have been shaken in the turbulent times through which 
the world has passed in recent years, with which man- 
kind still finds itself faced. In this volume of addresses, 
Dr. Taylor points the way to comfort amid confusion, to 

peaceful harborage amid the prevailing storm. 





Date Due 


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